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A common mistake is the assumption that US Jews care more about Israel than life in the US [GALLO/GETTY]
A congressional aide contacted me last week to tell me a story that he believed illustrated a point I often make.
His boss was visited by a group of eight senior citizens from his district. They had travelled to Washington with a group of retired teachers and decided, on the spur of the moment, to visit their representative. They had no appointment so they did not expect to see him but wanted to see the office, if nothing else.
The aide greeted the group, looked at the congressman's schedule, and decided that he could at least come out to say hello. He took the names and brought them in to his boss. The congressman perused the list and said, "The names are all Jewish. Are they from a Jewish organisation?" The aide said they were not and explained that they were older people on a bus tour sponsored by a charter travel group that catered mostly to retired educators.
The congressman (a Democrat) went out and delighted the group by ushering them into his office and talking to them for half an hour. He opened by telling them how strongly he supported the Obama administration's opposition to the Palestinian bid for UN recognition and how much he enjoyed Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech before a joint session of Congress. He elaborated on the Israel issue for a while and then asked for questions.
There was not one reference to anything he had said about Israel or any foreign policy issue. The only issues the visitors wanted to discuss were Medicare and "why Obama doesn't fight harder" against the Republicans. As Democrats, they all intended to support Obama for re-election but were disappointed with the president, especially for extending the Bush tax cuts.
The aide said that, afterward, the congressman chided him a little for not telling him that the group was not particularly interested in the Middle East. The aide said that he had not said that they were. It was the Congressman's assumption that their Jewish names meant that they cared primarily about Israel.
The congressman made a common mistake. Politicians assume that the main issue American Jews care about is Israel. To be blunt, a cheque to a political campaign from someone with an obviously Jewish surname will be chalked up to the candidate's support for Israel, unless the donor specifically indicates otherwise.
It isn't hard to understand how members of Congress, and even the president, came to the conclusion that the foremost issue for Jewish donors and voters is Israel. After all, that is precisely what they hear from the lobby and its cutouts (in the media and Congress itself). The lobby promotes the idea that Jews are single-issue voters who only care about Israel. They do that to enhance their own clout and to prevent policymakers from deviating from the lobby line.
Avoiding profiling
But the polls consistently show that Jews, like most Americans, are primarily concerned about domestic issues such as jobs, choice, the environment, equality, Medicare, etc. During the 2008 presidential election, the American Jewish Committee polled Jews on the issues that were most important to them. Fifty-four per cent said the economy. Eleven per cent said health care. Five per cent said terrorism. Three per cent said Israel.
It was against that backdrop that 78 per cent of Jews voted for Barack Obama in 2008, not because they thought he was "better" on Israel than uber-hawk John McCain.
This brings us to the current drop-off in Jewish support for President Obama. According to a Gallup poll published on September 16, Obama's approval rating among Jews is now down to 54 per cent from 83 per cent at his inauguration.
Naturally, the lobby and its acolytes are blaming Obama's significant slippage on the Israel issue. They say Jews are abandoning him because he is too tough on Prime Minister Netanyahu.
However, the fact is that there has never been a US president who has been so supportive, for better or worse, of every position taken by an Israeli prime minister. No doubt some Jews oppose Obama, citing Israel, but they are the same ones who didn't like him in 2008. And some may have been duped by the Republican Jewish Coalition into believing that a president admired even by Israel's rightist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, is anti-Israel. Let me be clear here. I don't approve of the president's support for Netanyahu, which is obviously politically calculated and bad for the United States, the Palestinians, and Israel. But anti-Israel? Not only is that charge a lie, but those making it know it's a lie.
No, it's not Israel that has produced the decline in Obama's standing among Jews. The reason for the decline is that Jews are Americans and support for the president is down among all Americans. And the reason it is down among Jews, as for their neighbours, is because joblessness is above nine per cent and the economy shows few signs of recovery.
For politicians, including, notably, President Obama, to behave as if their Jewish constituents are more concerned about Israel than they are about their own families and neighbours here comes very close to acceptance of the libel that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States. The fact that the lobby and its associated organisations tell them that Jews care primarily about Israel is no excuse. To believe it and to act on that belief is offensive. Worse than offensive.
American Jews have been good and loyal Americans ever since they arrived on these shores. They understand and appreciate that America has been, since its creation, the safest place in the world to be Jewish. They understand and appreciate that the US Constitution, and particularly the First Amendment's separation of church and state, have guaranteed their rights ever since George Washington himself welcomed Jews:
May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in this land continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other inhabitants - while everyone shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and there shall be none to make him afraid.
This is not to say that American Jews do not care about Israel. They do. But their national homeland is the United States and those who imply otherwise - especially lobbyists and pandering politicians - insult us all.
MJ Rosenberg is a Senior Foreign Policy Fellow at Media Matters Action Network.
A version of this article previously appeared on Foreign Policy Matters.
Follow MJ Roseberg on Twitter @MJayRosenberg
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy. |
BOSTON (MarketWatch) -- My oldest daughter leaves for college in a few weeks, so she is in the process of making her lists for what to bring, what to buy and what to do before she takes the next big step.
I'm making a similar list of all of the things I need to say to her, and all of the financial chores that need doing before she heads off to school.
Truth be told, almost every adult I know has some financial horror story that they lived through during their college years. In many cases, the horror only became apparent years later, when they were trying to start a family but were still paying off the excesses of college life.
Accordingly, long before my daughter started the process of picking a school, my wife and I tried to establish the ground rules -- the costs we plan to pay for and the things we expect her to cover. The basic decision of who pays for what typically is based on the family's circumstances, rather than on some magic formula.
My daughter has bought her own movie and theater tickets for years, so she's not suddenly expecting me to pick up the tab on entertainment costs. Likewise, she knows that if the family is paying for a meal plan -- and we are -- it's not our responsibility if she decides to enjoy the local burger joint. And she's still on my cell-phone plan, though I'm still not paying for silly games or ridiculous ring tones.
Here are the three big things on my to-do list before my daughter heads for school:
1. Check with health- and dental insurance providers, to learn their rules.
Effective September 2010, as part of the health-care reform law, parents can keep children on their plan up to the age of 26. That makes it possible to use your own plan rather than using a college-sponsored plan.
Prior to the change in the law, college students often lost their coverage at age 19 (and my daughter turns 19 before her freshman year is over), or upon graduation from high school or college. The White House asked insurers to make sure there were no coverage gaps for new college students, so many companies are actually providing the extended coverage prior to the September start date, making sure that kids who go off to school in August don't face an unpleasant surprise.
That said, having a child on your health plan may not make the most sense. Some insurers won't allow for out of town doctor visits, or would require your student to pick a new primary-care physician in their college town, or don't extend prescription coverage beyond your home area.
Know the rules, so that you don't get stuck with surprise out-of-pocket expenses. Meanwhile, check with the college or university to see if it offers a plan for students, and what that protection actually covers. Compare both coverage and premiums, then let your child know what they need to consider if they have a health issue.
If your student is going to be responsible for their own medical coverage, you might suggest they find a job with benefits, although that can be an awful lot to ask of a full-time college student.
2. Check property insurance coverage.
I've always made my children responsible for breaking their own technology; I'm not replacing the cell phone you dropped in the toilet.
That said, I want to know which of my kid's items might be covered on my property insurance so I can decide if renter's insurance is worth buying. To know, I will also have to get an idea of just what items my daughter is bringing to school.
Find out if the school has a policy that covers casualty losses in the dorms. Most don't, but some help students establish an insurance plan that covers their dorm room, a car (if they bring one) and health care.
3. Check the credit report.
Consumers are allowed one free credit report from each of the major credit bureaus every year. This is a case where a review at the beginning, middle and end of the school year makes sense. (You can get your free report online at www.annualcreditreport.com, the official site established by the credit bureaus to comply with the law.)
With my daughter, I'm not expecting to find much there. Still, I want to know she starts with a clean record and I'd like to be aware of changes -- if she comes to me for any credit counseling -- over time.
The good news here is that the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act that went into place last year prohibits applicants younger than 21 from obtaining a credit card unless they can prove they have the financial means to pay the bills. That means they'll need a pay stub or a bank statement; it's not as simple as walking across the college common, and signing up with some slick salesperson giving away free t-shirts and balloons.
To begin building a credit record for your child, or to give a card that can be used for emergencies or books or whatever expenses you and your kid agree to, you will have to co-sign for a credit card.
That said, if you co-sign your child's card, you are jointly liable and your own credit might suffer if your child doesn't pay the bill on time. This is why some parents will get a card where the bill comes to the family home rather than the dorm room.
Still, this is the time to set clear expectations. It's why my daughter and I need to have that talk before she heads off to school, because she needs to know that I don't want to be on the hook for any bad decisions.
I think she knows that "I'm dying for pizza" does not constitute my idea of an emergency, but she's a teenager, and I'm not leaving anything to chance. |
A million Indians enter the workforce every month, or about half the population of Australia every year. This is India’s ‘demographic dividend’. These youths are supposed to find jobs, earn, save and spend, a process that would pull millions of Indians out of poverty. At least, that is the story that we have been sold over the years. But the theory is not translating into practice.
Consider this: land-owning communities across large parts of the country have been on the streets, protesting, over the last three years. This includes the Marathas of Maharashtra, the Jats of Haryana, the Kapus of Andhra Pradesh and the Patidar Patels of Gujarat.
Why is this happening? The average size of the land farmed by the Indian farmer has fallen over the decades and in 2010-2011, the last time the agriculture census was carried out, stood at 1.16 hectares. In 1970-71, it was 2.82 hectares. This has happened because of the division of land across generations. This fall in farm size has made farming an unviable activity in many parts of the country. That’s why the land-owning castes across the country now want non-farm jobs, and have been protesting for quotas in government jobs.
The trouble is, though, the government does not create jobs anymore. In fact, between January 2006 and January 2014, the number of central government employees went up by just 30,000. Worse, the total number of people working for the public-sector enterprises has actually fallen over the years.
Only three out of five individuals who are looking for a job all through the year are able to find one. In rural India, only one out of two individuals who are looking for a job all through the year is able to find one. This has been the state of things since 2013-14.
What’s more, Indian industry favours expansion through capital, that is, buying more machines and equipment and putting them to work, rather than recruiting more people.
Nikhil Gupta and Madhurima Chowdhury, analysts at Motilal Oswal, have studied data up to 2014-2015 from the Annual Survey of Industries, and based on it conclude that over a period of 35 years up to 2014-2015, the rate of employment in Indian industry has on average increased at just 1.9% a year. In comparison, the capital employed by industry has grown at 14% a year.
Clearly, capital has won the race hands down. Or, in other words, when it comes to Indian industry, machine has won over man, for a while now. Indian corporates like the idea of expanding production and, in the process, their business by installing new machines and equipment, rather than employing more people.
One of the reasons for this is the large number of labour laws that Indian firms need to follow. As economists Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya wrote in India’s Tryst with Destiny: “The costs due to labour legislations rise progressively in discrete steps at seven, 10, 20, 50 and 100 workers. As the firm size rises from six regular workers towards 100, at no point between the two thresholds is the saving in manufacturing costs sufficiently large to pay for the extra costs of satisfying these laws.”
The National Manufacturing Policy of 2011 estimated that, on an average, a manufacturing unit needed to comply with 70 laws and regulations. At the same time, these units sometimes need to file as many as 100 returns a year. This basically ensures that an average Indian firm starts small and continues to remain small. In the process, jobs aren’t created. This is reflected in the fact that close to 85% of Indian apparel firms employ fewer than eight people. As per an Economic Survey estimate, close to 24 jobs can be created in this sector for every Rs 1 lakh in investment. Despite this, firms in this sector continue to remain small.
These are essentially big structural issues, which have been around for a while. But in the recent past, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s demonetisation, which overnight made 86.4% of the currency in circulation useless, ended up destroying many firms operating in the informal sector. The Goods and Services Tax has now added to this.
These days, the presence of the informal sector is seen as a bad thing because it doesn’t pay its share of taxes to the government. This isn’t totally true. People who work for these firms do spend the money they earn and pay their share of indirect taxes. Also, as the Economic Survey of 2015-2016 pointed out: “The informal sector should… be credited with creating jobs and keeping unemployment low.”
As economist Jim Walker of Asianomics wrote in a research note sometime back: “There is nothing intrinsic that says that the informal economy is a less effective or beneficial source of activity than the formal economy.” This is something that the Modi government needs to understand.
In its quest to collect more taxes, it is working towards destroying large parts of the informal economy, which is a huge part of the Indian economy. Ritika Mankar Mukherjee and Sumit Shekhar of Ambit Capital wrote in a research note: “India’s informal sector is large and labour-intensive. The informal sector accounts for nearly 40% of India’s GDP and employs close to 75% of the Indian labour force.”
This is something the government needs to remember in its bid to forcibly formalise the Indian economy.
(Vivek Kaul is the author of India’s Big Government — The Intrusive State and How It is Hurting Us). |
Inside the Indigo Plateau Pokemon League building. PSEUDO stands at the front desk.
RECEPTIONIST: Are you a boy or a girl?
PSEUDO: Boy.
RECEPTIONIST: And what is your name?
PSEUDO: Pseudo.
RECEPTIONIST: Would you like to rate your service in this survey?
PSEUDO leaves the front desk. The RECEPTIONIST calls after him.
RECEPTIONIST: Thank you for registering for the Elite Four challenge!
PSEUDO looks around the room. There are groups of people with microphones and cameras, talking animatedly about something.
PSEUDO: Is that a literal camera crew?
CECIL: Likely preparing for the next challenge.
VERNE: People sure love to see a good Pokemon battle.
ROD: And we’re gonna give ‘em one.
JASON: Gonna give them a few.
PSEUDO stops at the shop corner.
The CLERK stares, amazed, as PSEUDO piles an armful of Hyper Potions onto the desk.
CLERK: Okay, that’ll be-
PSEUDO leaves the desk and returns with another armful of Hyper Potions.
CLERK: Uh… that’ll-
PSEUDO leaves the desk and returns with another armful of Hyper Potions.
Then another.
Then an armful of Full Restores.
And another.
And another.
And two more of Full Heals.
And one more of Hyper Potions.
The CLERK looks between the pile on the counter and PSEUDO, who is staring expectantly.
CLERK: … that’ll be… a lot…
PSEUDO flashes his Trainer Card - in the currency section, instead of a monetary value, is the word “$HITLOAD$”.
PSEUDO: Bought like two things since I left Pallet Town.
CLERK: I don’t have the context for that - can you carry all this?
Later, his bag filled with items, PSEUDO crosses the room to the waiting area and sits. He looks across at the camera crews, who are starting to eye him.
ORBIT: Looks like you’re on the radar.
PSEUDO: Good. If they’d happy to broadcast Gary’s dirty little face across Kanto, I must be a dream come true.
CECIL: Anyone else feeling terrified and excited?
WARP: Not feeling as such would be strange.
VERNE: I’m ready.
ROD: Me too.
JASON: Same.
CECIL: And me.
WARP: Of course.
PSEUDO: Orbit? You ready to kick us off?
ORBIT hesitates, a little unsure, but decides.
CECIL: Definitely.
Ahead of them, a pair of guards open the double doors to the next room.
GUARDS: The Elite Four awaits! Challenger Pseudo is permitted to enter!
The camera crews scramble to gather their equipment and hurry through media access passages. PSEUDO watches them go, waiting for them to get there in time to capture his moment.
PSEUDO: Today’s my day.
PSEUDO holds ORBIT’s Pokeball and passes through the doors.
The Elite Four gauntlet. PSEUDO walks down a hallway lined with blue tiling and bright blue lighting.
PSEUDO: Could get used to this.
The hallway opens into a room lined with ice pillars. The temperature immediately drops and PSEUDO’s breath is visible in the air, as is a thin layer of mist along the ground.
In the center of the room, a red-headed woman in glasses and a skirt surveys PSEUDO.
LORELEI: Welcome to the Pokemon League.
PSEUDO: Thanks! You’re not wearing enough clothing for this room.
LORELEI: I am Lorelei of the Elite Four! No-one can best me when it comes to Ice Pokemon.
PSEUDO: Lucky I brought an Electric-type.
LORELEI raises an eyebrow and a Pokeball.
LORELEI: Your Pokemon will be at my mercy when they are frozen solid!
PSEUDO holds out ORBIT’s Pokeball, mirroring LORELEI. A superior smile plays upon her face.
LORELEI: Are you ready, Challenger?
PSEUDO: As I’ll ever be!
Elite Four Challenge - PSEUDO Vs. LORELEI
LORELEI releases DEWGONG as PSEUDO releases ORBIT.
LORELEI: Hail!
Part of the mist on the ground is lifted into the air, creating a swirling mass of clouds above the trainers. Hail begins to drop on the battlefield.
PSEUDO: Orbit! Shock Tactic!
ORBIT understands the code. It starts sparking and rams against DEWGONG, dealing a great amount of damage with Spark. Hail falls against ORBIT but it tries to ignore the damage. DEWGONG uses Ice Beam but only deals some damage to ORBIT - who quickly uses Shock Wave. DEWGONG is shocked with more electricity and falls - KO!
LORELEI: Lapras, use Confuse Ray!
LORELEI releases LAPRAS. ORBIT is hit with a Confuse Ray and becomes confused.
PSEUDO: Come on, Orbit, focus!
ORBIT struggles to see straight. It rolls around a little in its confusion - then strikes with a mighty Thunder, cracking down from the clouds above to defeat LAPRAS - KO!
LORELEI: Slowbro - attack while it’s confused!
LORELEI releases SLOWBRO. She prepares to attack - but is surprised by something.
ORBIT has been replaced with JASON.
PSEUDO: He needed a break.
The excited JASON leaps at SLOWBRO with Bite, taking the part-Psychic type down easily - KO!
LORELEI grits her teeth and releases CLOYSTER. PSEUDO returns JASON and brings ORBIT back out, now free of confusion.
ORBIT uses Thunder straight out of the Pokeball, bringing down CLOYSTER in one hit - KO!
LORELEI throws out her last Pokemon - a JYNX.
LORELEI: Ice Punch!
PSEUDO: Thunder!
ORBIT moves first with Thunder, bringing down a bolt of lighting - that JYNX dodges! JYNX darts across the field and lands an Ice Punch into ORBIT.
PSEUDO: Whoa-!
JYNX stumbles. Signs of electrical disturbance sputter around her.
PSEUDO: Hah! Orbit’s Contact paralyzed her!
LORELEI: That won’t help you one bit!
ORBIT tries Spark, hitting JYNX and damaging her a bit.
LORELEI: Jynx - Lovely Kiss!
ORBIT is hit with Lovely Kiss. Its eyes close as it quickly falls asleep.
PSEUDO: Oh, boy.
PSEUDO takes the opportunity to spray ORBIT with a Hyper Potion.
LORELEI: Take him out.
JYNX pounds ORBIT with another Ice Punch. PSEUDO wakes ORBIT up with a Full Heal.
ORBIT uses another Spark, almost defeating JYNX - but is put to sleep by another Lovely Kiss.
PSEUDO uses a Full Restore on ORBIT.
PSEUDO: Haha, now we’re-
LORELEI uses a Full Restore on JYNX.
PSEUDO: Oh, for fuck’s sake-
ORBIT uses Thunder but misses. JYNX uses Lovely Kiss again. PSEUDO wakes ORBIT up with a Full Heal just in time to get Ice Punched again.
PSEUDO: Come on, Orbit, just one good hit-!
ORBIT gathers its energy and uses Thunder again. Lightning strikes from the clouds down to the battlefield below - hitting JYNX for a critical hit! JYNX finally falls - KO!
PSEUDO wins!
PSEUDO: Yes! Round one done!
ORBIT: We did it!
LORELEI adjusts her glasses.
LORELEI: Alas, Challenger, for I… you’re better than I thought!
LORELEI steps aside. The door to the next hallway opens behind her.
LORELEI: Go on ahead - but be warned, you’ve only got a taste of the League’s power.
PSEUDO: Tastes like victory.
LORELEI: Aren’t you the little smart alec.
PSEUDO gives LORELEI a cheeky grin as he ambles through to the next hallway, which is is tiled yellow, lined with yellow light.
The next room is similar to the first, though where there was blue there is yellow, and where there were pillars of ice there are pillars of stone.
BRUNO: So, you’ve beaten Lorelei!
In the middle of the room, PSEUDO watches a large, muscled, shirtless man stand up and face him.
PSEUDO: (monotone) Oh my god.
BRUNO stands with his hands on his hips, his chest puffed out - the very image of manly dominance.
BRUNO: I am Bruno of the Elite Four!
PSEUDO: You’re kidding.
BRUNO: Through rigorous training, people and Pokémon can become stronger without limit-
PSEUDO: (judgmentally) The muscles.
BRUNO: I’ve lived and trained with my Fighting Pokémon!
PSEUDO: The drive.
BRUNO: And that will never change-!
PSEUDO: The hypermasculinity.
BRUNO: (annoyed) What are you saying?
PSEUDO: That I’ve never seen a more heterosexual man in my fucking life.
BRUNO: I don’t understand.
PSEUDO: Nothing - is your beltline torn off?
BRUNO: Silence!
PSEUDO: Did you belt a ripped onesie for the goddamn aesthetic-
BRUNO holds out an oversized Pokeball.
BRUNO: We will grind you down with our superior power!
PSEUDO sputters in laughter.
PSEUDO: You’re kidding! You can’t be serious, you-
BRUNO: Onix!
BRUNO releases ONIX.
PSEUDO: Fine, but holy shit, dude.
PSEUDO releases CECIL.
Elite Four Challenge - PSEUDO Vs. BRUNO
BRUNO: Rock Tomb!
PSEUDO: Surf!
ONIX attempts to entomb CECIL but the rocks are washed away by the Surf - ONIX is slammed against the wall. KO!
BRUNO: A single hit!?
BRUNO takes out another oversized Pokeball and releases HITMONCHAN.
BRUNO: Hitmonchan!
CECIL: That’s your cue, Warp.
CECIL returns as WARP is released. He steps lightly, watching HITMONCHAN closely.
BRUNO: Take him out!
HITMONCHAN throws a punch but WARP holds up a spoon. HITMONCHAN’s fist stops just before it makes contact, being held back by psychic energy. HITMONCHAN pushes, trying to get past the wall, getting closer to attacking WARP…
PSEUDO: Warp, no playing around this time.
WARP: Ah.
HITMONCHAN is blasted backwards with the force of WARP’s Psychic pulse. He hits the wall in the same place ONIX did - KO!
BRUNO releases HITMONLEE.
BRUNO: Hitmonlee, Mega Kick!
HITMONLEE springs across the room but WARP waves a hand and casts him aside, immediately KO'ing him.
BRUNO: What? No! Onix, get him!
PSEUDO: Another one?
ONIX is released. It crashes into the ground, immediately using Earthquake.
PSEUDO: Earthquake…
WARP, however, is fine. The ground around him rumbles and breaks but where the floor begins to dip, he remains in the air. Rocks crash around him but those that would make contact instead begin to glow and float around him.
ONIX, wary, watches the display. It raises its tail to-
WARP raises his hands. The rocks shoot across the room and pelt ONIX - before it can react, WARP already has it in the air. ONIX is spun around like a rotor and crashes into the ceiling - KO!
BRUNO: Machamp! Use-
MACHAMP is barely released before WARP has him targeted. WARP holds him in the air. MACHAMP’s body begins to spin and shake, as it were being pushed and pulled in every direction at once. It tries to escape, but WARP has him. WARP holds up his spoon and points - MACHAMP is launched like a bullet into the wall - KO!
PSEUDO wins!
PSEUDO: Victoryyyyyy!
WARP: Fantastic!
BRUNO squeezes his fists in frustration. His entire body flexes.
BRUNO: (defeatedly) Rgh… my job is done. Go face your next challenge.
PSEUDO: Cheers, guy.
PSEUDO passes BRUNO, but stops beside him.
PSEUDO: One more question, Bruno.
BRUNO: Yes?
PSEUDO: … what does it take to be a real man?
BRUNO looks to PSEUDO and gives a proud, knowing smile.
BRUNO: A real man is one who trains with pride, a man who’s strength is matched only by-
PSEUDO: (prettily) Trick question, you’re in a prison, wear pink once in a while.
PSEUDO skips away from BRUNO, who is left stunned.
PSEUDO hurries back.
PSEUDO: Just gonna-
PSEUDO runs a hand down BRUNO’s arm.
PSEDUO: Incredible. Thanks, Brun’.
PSEUDO leaves the room. BRUNO looks after him, still confused.
The third hallway is lined with purple, giving it an eerie vibe.
PSEUDO: Oh, okay, we’re getting edgy now.
The third room is coloured purple, surprising no-one. The pillars lining the room are stone memorials.
In the center, an older woman with an apron and cane stands.
AGATHA: I am Agatha of the Elite Four.
PSEUDO: Woah, you’re kinda ol-you know what, you look lovely.
AGATHA: I hear Oak’s taken a lot of interest in you, child.
PSEUDO: (lighting up) Oh, how do you know Oak?
AGATHA: That old duff was once tough and hansome-
PSEUDO: (recoiling) I no longer want to know how you know Oak.
AGATHA: - but now he’s a shadow of his former self. Now all he wants to do is fiddle with his Pokedex! Pokemon aren’t for collecting! They’re for battling!
PSEUDO: Are you a fucking Rocket grunt?
AGATHA: I’ll show you how a real trainer battles!
PSEUDO: What, with a villainous backstory?
AGATHA throws a Pokeball, releasing GENGAR. PSEUDO releases JASON.
JASON: To be fair, you’re not collecting Pokemon either, you’re using us to battle, too-
PSEUDO: Jason, don’t be that guy.
JASON laughs.
Elite Four Challenge - PSEUDO Vs. AGATHA!
AGATHA: Gengar! Double Team!
GENGAR splits into two forms of itself, grinning madly.
AGATHA: Hahaha! Now you must-
JASON Bites one of the GENGARs - the real one. It immediately falls - KO!
AGATHA: What?
PSEUDO: Can we not monologue through the fight, please? We’ve all got places to be.
AGATHA: Grr- Golbat, take her place!
PSEUDO: Warp, take this one!
JASON tags out for WARP as AGATHA releases her GOLBAT.
AGATHA: Use-
PSEUDO: Psybeam!
WARP emits a Psybeam from its forehead jewel straight into GOLBAT’s mouth. KO!
PSEUDO: Yeah, eat it!
AGATHA: Nng! Arbok, Iron Tail!
AGATHA releases ARBOK. It makes to swing its tail but WARP flicks it aside with Psychic. KO!
PSEUDO: You know these are all Poison-types, right?
AGATHA: What’s that supposed to mean?
PSEUDO: Your PR people are billing you as a Ghost-type trainer.
AGATHA: I have two Gengars and a Haunter!
PSEUDO: Woah. So diverse. My mistake.
AGATHA grits her teeth and releases another GENGAR. PSEUDO switches WARP out for JASON again.
JASON: Haven’t we been down this road before?
GENGAR sticks its tongue out. It pulls it back in to attack but JASON is too fast - he Bites it. The GENGAR shrieks and Flinches, giving JASON the opportunity to Bite it again, defeating it - KO!
AGATHA: Oh, you are a defiant one, aren’t you.
PSEUDO: This is what not being thirsty for Oak’s dick looks like.
AGATHA’s eyes widen in horrific offence. She throws her last Pokeball into the field.
AGATHA: Go, Haunter!
AGATHA’S HAUNTER is released, looking quite terrifying. AGATHA smirks.
AGATHA: You know what to do.
HAUNTER chuckles, its body growing larger in preparation to attack.
PSEUDO: Get it.
JASON Bites HAUNTER, doing a significant amount of damage - but not enough to defeat it.
JASON: Shit-
PSEUDO: Oh, boy-
HAUNTER’s energy spikes. It opens its hands and flashes its eyes, enacting its attack-!
HAUNTER uses Curse, cutting its own HP to zero.
PSEUDO and JASON stare. AGATHA’s lips are pursed.
PSEUDO: … did it just-
AGATHA: Obviously.
PSEUDO wins!
JASON: Huh. Well.
PSEUDO: A win’s a win?
JASON: Let’s go with that.
AGATHA is bitter.
AGATHA: Eurgh… you little maggot- you mock me, slander me and now you-
PSEUDO: Beat you fair and square? Don’t mind if I did.
PSEUDO goes to leave.
PSEUDO: By the way, having a tragic backstory explain your shitty beliefs doesn’t count if it’s about some guy not liking you.
AGATHA: We were colleagues, you presumptuous little shit.
PSEUDO: Oh my god, it was a joke, lady - (nicely) if you’re gonna be evil, don’t make it about someone else. Succumb to your own dark side. Corrupt your own damn self.
AGATHA: I’m not evil, I’m-
PSEDUO: (nicely) Agree to disagree, you heartless witch.
AGATHA: I hate you.
PSEDUO smiles serenely and goes to leave again.
PSEUDO: (quickly) Also, Pokemon aren’t for collecting or battling, they’re for friendship and lifelong bonding and all that stuff 'kay bye.
PSEUDO leaves. The fourth hallway is teal-coloured.
PSEUDO: We’re nearly there, guys - just one more member to go.
The fourth room is decorated with what look like huge dragon claws - or teeth. A caped man with dramatic hair stands in the center of the room.
LANCE: Ah! I’ve heard about you, Pseudo!
PSEUDO: Sweet.
LANCE: You can call me Lance the Dragon Trainer! I lead the Elite Four!
LANCE swishes his cape.
LANCE: You know that Dragons are mythical Pokemon?
PSEUDO has a flashback to the Legendary Birds and MEWTWO.
PSEUDO: (strained) Are they really?
LANCE: They’re hard to catch and but their powers are superior! They’re virtually indestructible!
PSEUDO: 'Indestructible’, okay, I’m sure that’s true.
LANCE: What’s that? You doubt our power?
PSEUDO: Isn’t Gary already the Champion? Haven’t you already been defeated-
LANCE: (dramatically) What this insolence?
PSEUDO: What’s what?
LANCE: The isole-
PSEUDO: (yelling) What?
LANCE: (yelling) I said what is this-
PSEUDO: I can’t hear over all the hot air escaping from your head.
LANCE: The scorn!
PSEUDO: The what?
LANCE: Enough!
LANCE lifts a Pokeball.
LANCE: Are you ready to lose? Your League challenge ends with me, Pseudo!
PSEUDO lifts his own.
PSEUDO: Nah.
Both trainers throw their Pokeballs into the field.
Elite Four Challenge - PSEUDO Vs. LANCE
LANCE releases GYARADOS, PSEUDO releases ORBIT.
GYARADOS arcs its body to attack - ORBIT tackles it with SPARK. GYARADOS is electrified and goes down immediately. KO!
PSEUDO: How challenging.
ORBIT chuckles.
LANCE: Well, then. Try out my Dragonair!
LANCE releases DRAGONAIR. It uncurls in the air and trills menacingly.
PSEUDO: Hmm, Dragon-types. Don’t have any Ice, don’t have any Dragon, resistant against most elements… guess I need a Wildcard.
PSEUDO brings ORBIT back and throws a Pokeball.
ROD is released.
ROD: Ye-heah, it’s Rod’s time!
LANCE: (laughing) A Raticate? You send a Raticate before the almighty dragons? What could you possibly do with-
ROD Hyper Fangs DRAGONAIR straight into submission - KO!
LANCE: What?
ROD: Eat a dick, Lance!
LANCE: Rgh- my second Dragonair - Thunder Wave!
DRAGONAIR is released. DRAGONAIR is Hyper Fanged. DRAGONAIR is KO’d.
ROD looks at LANCE with the smuggest expression possible.
LANCE: Come on! Oh, prepare, Pseudo… prepare for Dragonite!
LANCE throws another Pokeball - releasing DRAGONITE, who looms over the battlefield.
PSEUDO: Aw, he’s adorable!
LANCE: Wh- he is not adorable! He is a mighty dragon!
PSEUDO: (with a squeaky-high voice) But look at his little face!
ROD: Orbit, he’s part-Flying, get on this!
ROD tags out for ORBIT.
PSEUDO: Hey, I thought you wanted to-
ROD: I took down two of the leader of the Elite Four’s Pokemon without breaking a sweat, I’m good, man.
PSEUDO: Nice.
LANCE: Dragonite… Outrage.
DRAGONITE envelops itself in its powerful dragon energy - it thrashes into ORBIT, dealing quite a bit of damage.
PSEUDO: Orbit! Are you okay?
ORBIT: Rgh- I’m going to end this-!
ORBIT charges an attack - Thunder. DRAGONITE is struck by a powerful bolt of lightning… but survives.
ORBIT: What?
PSEUDO: No-!
ORBIT: But it- it was-
DRAGONITE continues to attack, barreling into ORBIT. ORBIT is smashed away into the wall.
PSEUDO: Orbit!
ORBIT’s surface cracks. Its entire expression is frozen in place.
PSEUDO: What are- no, hold on - Orbit, what’s happening?
The crack spreads. From inside, a bright light is growing.
PSEUDO: Oh my god, no, no no-
A piece breaks away. The light inside explodes into the room. Sparks fly, electricity spills.
PSEUDO: Orbit…
The light fades. The sparks stop. What is left on the floor of the battlefield no longer has an expression.
PSEUDO: Orbit-!
WARP leaps out of his Pokeball, roaring in anger.
WARP uses Psychic on DRAGONITE, eliminating the rest of its HP. KO.
LANCE: Rrgh… your Pokemon are strong! Let’s see them take caare of this!
LANCE releases his final Pokemon - AERODACTYL.
WARP: Pseudo!
PSEDUO is forced to leave ORBIT.
PSEUDO: Ah… uh… Verne! Verne, switch out!
PSEUDO is only mid-sentence when VERNE emerges from his Pokeball.
LANCE: Have you ever seen an Aerodactly before? This Pokemon’s been extinct for a long time, I wouldn’t expect you to-!
PSEUDO: Let’s send it back.
VERNE uses Giga Drain, though it doesn’t harm AERODACTLY as much. AERODACTYL uses Wing Attack. VERNE uses Razor Leaf.
VERNE: We’re whittling him down!
LANCE uses a Full Restore.
PSEUDO: Fuck your entire life.
VERNE and AERODACTYL continue trading attacks. VERNE uses Vine Whip. AERODACTLY uses Wing Attack. VERNE uses Razor Leaf. AERODACTYL uses Wing Attack.
VERNE uses Giga Drain. LANCE uses another Full Restore.
PSEUDO: Argh, come on!
Razor Leaf. Wing Attack. Giga Drain. Wing Attack.
VERNE uses Giga Drain, depleting AERODACTYL of almost all its HP.
PSEUDO: That’s it, Verne, he’s nearly gone! You can do it!
LANCE: Hehe… Aerodactyl!
PSEUDO anticipates a moment of horror just before it happens.
LANCE: … Hyper Beam!
PSEUDO: No…!
ROD: Verne!
AERODACTYL opens its mouth - an intense, powerful beam of energy blasts out at VERNE.
VERNE: Pseudo-?
It connects. VERNE is engulfed in the blast.
PSEUDO: NO! VERNE, NO!
AERODACTYL’s attack ends. The light disappears. Dust and residual light and energy take a moment to dissipate. PSEUDO watches, terrified.
The field clears. Surrounded by burn marks on the ground, is VERNE… barely even singed.
VERNE: (standing up) Not even a scratch!
VERNE took almost no damage. PSEUDO nearly falls over in relief.
PSEDUO: VERNE, HOLY FUCK-
VERNE lands a Razor Leaf on a surprised AERODACTYL, which falls - KO!
PSEUDO wins!
PSEUDO sprints at VERNE, embracing him.
PSEUDO: Holy shit, dude, that was so fucking scary-
VERNE: You’re telling me!
LANCE is surprised.
LANCE: I can’t believe my dragons lost to you…
LANCE points to PSEUDO, who rolls his eyes in expectation of another annoying quip.
LANCE: You… are a Pokemon Master!
PSEUDO blinks.
PSEUDO: What? Whoa…
VERNE: Nice work, Pseudo!
PSEUDO: Uh… thanks, Lance!
LANCE: I’d love to name you Champion here and now, but-
PSEUDO: (darkly) Gary Oak was here.
LANCE: Uh… yes. He beat the Elite Four before you, so HE is the real Pokemon League Champion-
PSEUDO: Not for long.
PSEUDO walks past LANCE.
LANCE: Good luck, Pseudo.
PSEUDO almost looks back, but remembers what’s there.
PSEUDO: … thanks, man.
RIP Orbit the Electrode, Lv65.
PSEUDO: (under his breath) Orbit… I’m sorry…
The final hallway - lined with red. It’s longer than the others and includes a staircase to a large set of ornate doors.
PSEUDO walks towards it, VERNE following behind him. His footsteps echo through the empty hall.
VERNE: … Pseudo?
PSEUDO: Yeah?
VERNE: I’m sorry about Orbit.
PSEUDO: … it’s okay.
VERNE: … he was my safety net, wasn’t he. For Light Screen.
PSEUDO: … yeah. Do you still want to-
VERNE: Yeah, I do. I have to. I just wanted to make sure you knew-
PSEUDO: Yeah.
ROD: Hey, you two!
ROD, JASON, CECIL and WARP leave their Pokeballs, landing on VERNE’s back.
ROD: Stop being so depressing!
JASON: Yeah! Fights can be hard -
CECIL: And dangerous.
JASON: - but they’re fun, too, y'know.
WARP: That’s why we continue to do it, after all.
CECIL: And we’ve got nothing to be scared of!
WARP: Gary Oak has nothing the likes of what we have.
ROD: Yeah, Gary Oak’s a little shit!
PSEUDO: (smiling) You guys…
VERNE: Hey, Pseudo. They’re right.
PSEUDO looks at his team, together in front of him.
ROD: We’re gonna win this, man. For Orbit… for Diana.
VERNE: For everyone.
PSEUDO: … you’re right. You all are.
PSEUDO turns to face the door. PSEUDO’s Pokemon return to their Pokeballs.
PSEUDO pushes the door open, stepping through to the final challenge. |
The Samaritans were the descendants of Israel’s northern kingdom who had intermarried with their Assyrian captors after they were carried off into exile in 722 BC. The Jews regarded the Samaritans as traitors who had exchanged the bloodline of Abraham in order to settle in a pagan land.
Jesus and his disciples came to the Samaritan village of Sychar at the hottest part of the day and stopped there to rest and eat. The disciples went into the village for food while Jesus stayed by the well outside of town. While he was there, a woman approached. That she came to the well during the hottest part of the day suggested she was a social outsider who had to get water when no one else was around. She was surprised to come upon this man and even more surprised when Jesus asked her for a drink.
“But you are a Jewish man and I am a Samaritan woman,” she said. “Why are you even talking to me?”
Jesus answered, “If you knew who it is that asks you for a drink, you would be asking me and I would be giving you living water.” (Jn 4:9-10)
The woman regarded Jesus for a moment as she processed what he said. Were they even talking about water anymore? She said, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and this well is deep. How are you going to get that kind of water?”
With that, they were now deep in the pools of metaphor.
Pointing to the well, Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst again. In fact, what I give will become a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
She said, “Where can I get that water? My life is hard, and I’d love to be able to leave it behind.” (Jn 4:13-15)
Though she was talking about her daily midday trips to the well, her life was full of burdens greater than this. In her wake lay a slew of dead and broken relationships, and with them the pain they heaped upon her fragile frame. She put on a brave face to stand her ground and talk like this with Jesus, but he saw right through her.
“Go get your husband, and I’ll tell you all about this water,” Jesus said.
She said, “I don’t have one.” She knew he knew better than to imagine she was a married woman.
“I know,” Jesus told her. “You’ve had five husbands and the man you live with now is not one of them.”
This was such a personal, painful detail to come from the mouth of a stranger. He was correct, but what would he do with this revelation? Would he shame her? Abuse her? Take advantage of her?
To deflect the intimate light she’d just come under, she started asking Jesus questions about the differences between Jews and Samaritans—specifically about where God wanted his people to gather for worship. But Jesus didn’t begin this conversation so that they could talk about geography. He disarmed her in order to get to her heart through her wound.
He said, “Your people and my people argue about many things. A time is coming and in fact is now here when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth. These are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.” (Jn 4:24)
The woman said, “My whole life I’ve heard that the Messiah is coming and that when he comes, everything will be made plain.”
Jesus said, “Listen. I am he.” (Jn 4:25-26)
The woman was shaken. When she first encountered Jesus, she assumed nothing much would come of their meeting. She came from the wrong race, religion, gender, and moral reputation for anyone like Jesus to care. But in this moment, he hadn’t just shown kindness to her. He had exposed her insatiable thirst for comfort and control and revealed her most painful secrets and then told her he could satisfy her deepest thirst forever.
Jesus didn’t see her the way she saw him. He saw in her a troubled woman longing to be satisfied on a deep soul level. He saw her attempts to slake her own thirst through pluck and a long line of men. But he also saw a person who was created for worship and someone who would al- ways be thirsty apart from it. He saw a woman made in the image of God who wanted something God had put in her heart to desire—himself. And Jesus was telling her that the way to a satisfied heart came through him. It was as though as they sat beside the well, Jesus and this woman were the only two people in the world. He didn’t regard her by her reputation, but according to what her heart was created to hunger for.
She was a symbol of the world Jesus had stepped into—a world of people created to know and love their Maker. But so much in and around them was broken. The brokenness filtered through every single human relationship, from an unnoticed woman alone in the desert to the tetrarch of Galilee who had John the Baptist locked away in his dungeon. But that unsuspecting world was beginning to change as Jesus’s ways and words continued to spread.
About the Post: This post is an excerpt of chapter 7 of my 2015 release Behold the King of Glory: A Narrative of the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
About the Art: Annibale Carracci (1560-1609), The Samaritan Woman At The Well, oil on canvas, 170 x 225 cm, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy.
___________ |
Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Scott Morrison — the three Liberal ministers seen as leadership candidates in February's failed spill motion — are all set to campaign in the Canning byelection over the next 10 days.
But Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who is in Northern Australia for the rest of this week, would not say on Tuesday if he would make another appearance with Liberal candidate Andrew Hastie ahead of the crunch by-election contest because "life is pretty busy".
Tony Abbott with Liberal MP Andrew Hastie in 2015. Credit:Thomas Davidson
In addition to Mr Turnbull, Ms Bishop and Mr Morrison, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Finance Minister Mathias Cormann plan to campaign in the seat over the next week.
The Canning byelection is due to be held on September 19, but with Parliament to sit for two weeks from September 7, next week offers the most straightforward opportunity for senior ministers to participate in the campaign. |
EA Sports today unveiled the upcoming “playbook” structure for news on Madden NFL 25. The first scheduled for Thursday, “Run Free”, is expected to be similar to the running game enhancements already announced for NCAA Football 14. That it comes along with the cover announcement and the start of the NFL Draft suggests it won’t be much more than that.
A few weeks later talk on advancements to Connected Careers will begin – though interestingly it’s being referred to as “Connected Franchise” here with a name change likely in response to considerable consumer confusion regarding the transition from Franchise to Connected Careers last year. Too many people thought Franchise mode had just been removed.
There is also a distinct gap surrounding E3 which begins June 11 with the EA press conference likely falling on Monday the 10th. That could mean either something being kept under the wraps for the event, or that the focus there will be on next-gen with the 360/PS3 versions taking the backseat for that period.
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Connected Franchise Part 1 (5/6)
Cement your legacy as one of the all-time great NFL players or coaches in the new and improved Connected Franchise.
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Madden Ultimate Team (7/1)
Enjoy new ways to play and build your team in this year’s edition of Ultimate Team. |
But as we approach an election year, it is important to acknowledge the larger context: Obama has done better than many critics on the left or the right give him credit for.
He took office in the worst recession in more than half a century, amid fears of a complete economic implosion. As The Onion, the satirical news organization, described his election at the time: “Black Man Given Nation’s Worst Job.”
The administration helped tug us back from the brink of economic ruin. Obama oversaw an economic stimulus that, while too small, was far larger than the one House Democrats had proposed. He rescued the auto industry and achieved health care reform that presidents have been seeking since the time of Theodore Roosevelt.
Despite virulent opposition that has paralyzed the government, Obama bolstered regulation of the tobacco industry, signed a fair pay act and tightened control of the credit card industry. He has been superb on education, weaning the Democratic Party from blind support for teachers’ unions while still trying to strengthen public schools.
Photo
In foreign policy, Obama has taken a couple of huge risks. He approved the assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan, and despite much criticism he led the international effort to overthrow Muammar el-Qaddafi. So far, both bets are paying off.
Granted, the economic downturn overshadows all else, as happens in every presidency. Ronald Reagan, the Teflon president, saw his job approval rating sink to 35 percent in January 1983 because of economic troubles. A faltering economy sent the popularity of the first president Bush into a tailspin, tumbling to 29 percent in 1992.
By comparison, President Obama has about a 43 percent approval rating, according to Gallup.
Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois tells me he thinks that liberals will eventually unite behind the president. “It’s never going to be the first date we had four years ago,” he said. “But I don’t question the fact that he’ll have the support of the left.”
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Still, it’s hard to see how Obama will replicate the turnout that swept him into office, or repeat victories in crucial states like Florida and Ohio.
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Then again, Republicans face a similar enthusiasm gap with their likely nominee, Mitt Romney. (Republicans keep searching for any other candidate who they think would be electable, when they already have one: Jon Huntsman. They just don’t like him.)
Earlier this month, I asked Bill Clinton — who has a better intuitive feel for politics than anyone I know — about Obama’s chances for re-election. “I’ll be surprised if he’s not re-elected,” Clinton said, adding that Obama would do better when matched against a specific opponent like Romney.
Clinton said that Romney did “a very good job” as governor of Massachusetts and would be a credible general election candidate. But Clinton added that Romney or any Republican nominee would be hampered by “a political environment in the Republican primary that basically means you can’t be authentic unless you’ve got a single-digit I.Q.”
I’m hoping the European elections will help shock Democrats out of their orneriness so that they accept the reality that we’ll be facing not a referendum, but a choice. For a couple of years, the left has joined the right in making Obama a piñata. That’s fair: it lets off steam, and it’s how we keep politicians in line.
But think back to 2000. Many Democrats and journalists alike, feeling grouchy, were dismissive of Al Gore and magnified his shortcomings. We forgot the context, prided ourselves on our disdainful superiority — and won eight years of George W. Bush.
This time, let’s do a better job of retaining perspective. If we turn Obama out of office a year from now, let’s make sure it is because the Republican nominee is preferable, not just out of grumpiness toward the incumbent during a difficult time. |
On Friday afternoon, Wendy Lower, the author of Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields, participated in an interactive interview with The Atlantic’s Jennie Rothenberg Gritz. Lower had discussed her process of researching and writing Hitler’s Furies, now a National Book Award Finalist, then they turned to the online audience for questions.
An elderly woman popped up onscreen via webcam. “Can you suggest any strategies to take care of the emotions?” she asked in accented English. “Sometimes I manage and sometimes I don’t.”
After a moment, the woman clarified: “I’m a survivor. So sometimes I can put on my teacher hat and I manage. And sometimes at the end of it, I’m exhausted. It’s very hard to deal with the events as history alone.”
Liz Igra, as she identified herself in the online conversation, went on to say that she’d spent many years giving presentations on her experience as a Holocaust survivor. Because she’d seen “how poorly the subject was taught, not for lack of information, but rather of a deeper understanding of how to connect with students,” she started an organization of her own five years ago that trains teachers how to present the Holocaust in classroom settings. Lower, who teaches Holocaust history herself at Claremont McKenna College in California, had plenty of thoughts on that subject. What ensued from there was a conversation between two teachers about how to best research the Holocaust as well as convey the magnitude of the atrocities carried out against European Jews during World War II to students, while also protecting the students’ emotions and their own. |
One student's fight for mental health awareness inspires a movement
Sarah Spitz arrived at Emory University in 2009 eager to find out what the next four years had in store. But as the readings piled up and her first test approached, the self-proclaimed perfectionist couldn’t handle the pressure.
Spitz struggled with depression and anxiety in high school and was hesitant to leave Emory to get help. When she did go home, she was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder.
For Spitz, this marked the start of a battle to transform mental health awareness on college campuses nationwide.
“A lot of people feel like the diagnosis is a death sentence,” Spitz says. “I never really felt like that. Getting that diagnosis was kind of reassuring, knowing that there were other people like me and that I’m not the only one.”
Sarah Spitz with Active Minds founder and Executive Director Alison Malmon. (Photo11: Photo courtesy Spitz)
And Spitz is not alone. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, one in every four young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 have a diagnosable mental illness, which includes depression, anxiety, eating disorders and addictive behaviors among others. This statistic inspired Spitz to share her story in an effort to diminish stigmas surrounding mental health issues.
And she has inspired the country. Just last week Spitz was named one of CNN’s “Nine Mental Health Warriors,” honoring those who are making a difference in the fight for mental wellness.
Spitz says it wasn’t easy to open up and share her experiences at first. When she returned to Emory in the fall of 2011, she had many awkward conversations and was hesitant to tell people where she had been for the past two years.
Related: Viewpoint: Don't be afraid to seek help for mental health issues during college
But once she discovered Active Minds, a non-profit student mental health advocacy organization, her disorder became an experience she used to help others.
“I really do believe that Active Minds has helped me get through school,” says Spitz. “I began sharing my story with people and I found that by starting to talk about it, we can get other people to talk about it and really get people the help that they need and deserve.”
“We all think that if we’re struggling it’s our fault and we’re the only ones."
This is exactly what Alison Malmon had in mind when she founded Active Minds in 2003 at the University of Pennsylvania after her brother took his own life at the age of 22. The organization is now on 400 high school and college campuses nationwide
“I started Active Minds with the goal to get students talking about mental health issues--to share their experiences, to learn from others, to know that there is help and to feel comfortable getting that help as soon as they need it,” Malmon says.
She says Active Minds is fortunate to have members like Spitz.
“She’s a tremendous advocate who uses her experiences to help others,” says Malmon. To open up about what she’s experienced and use it to help and support others, it just speaks volumes for her character.”
Dr. Mark McLeod, the director of Emory’s Student Counseling Center and Emory’s Active Minds adviser calls Spitz a “force of nature.”
He says Active Mind’s presence at Emory has been instrumental in sparking important conversations on campus. McLeod points to one event called “Speak Out,” where students to submit and read stories about their own mental health challenges, that has proved tremendously successful over the past three years.
“As a mental health professional, for students to just come to an event like that, and then to speak at an event like that, or even have their story read anonymously-- it’s just mind blowing,” says McLeod. “Four years ago you would have had nobody there.”
Related: 55 universities join Jed and Clinton health program to address mental health, student safety
McLeod hopes that in the upcoming years, Spitz’s work will prompt students to view mental and physical health issues in a similar light.
“There’s no logical reason in my mind why it should be harder to tell somebody, ‘I’m anxious,’ ‘I’m depressed,’ as opposed to ‘I have a sore throat,’ My arm is hurting,’” says Spitz. “Active Minds is going to change that and to be a part of that, which is an amazing thing.”
While Emory and other campuses have come a long way, Malmon says there’s still more to be done.
“Not quite everyone yet has that knowledge of the real nature of mental health issues -- that mental health issues are real health issues, and there are resources available for seeking out help,” Malmon says.
She hopes Active Minds will reach every U.S. college campus so students like Spitz can inspire others to get help.
“We all think that if we’re struggling it’s our fault and we’re the only ones,” says Malmon. “(Sarah) reminds everybody that it’s not always sunshine and roses throughout a young adult life – that challenges can happen and you have reason to hope.”
And Spitz is eager to continue sharing her story and giving advice
“Do your best, and accept that your best might not be the same as someone else’s best and that’s OK,” says Spitz. “There are a lot of people, offices and professionals in the university system that are there to help. So just know you’re not alone.”
While Spitz never expected that her initial struggle would become a life-long mental health advocacy fight, she has big plans for the future.
“I want to show that it’s possible to get through college even if you struggle,” says Spitz. “Know that it’s OK if your path doesn’t look the same as everyone else’s.”
Rachel Rosenbaum is a student at Emory University and a spring 2015 USA TODAY Collegiate Correspondent.
This story originally appeared on the USA TODAY College blog, a news source produced for college students by student journalists. The blog closed in September of 2017.
Read or Share this story: https://usat.ly/2was8GC |
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not represent the views of Townhall.com.
Truth can be buried in a grave but it won’t stay there.
That doesn’t mean those left holding the shovel won’t temporarily profit. Judas got his 30 pieces of silver and Barack Obama got his second term, thanks to those in his administration like Susan Rice who buried truth and misled the American people.
The barbaric chemical weapon attack on innocent children, women and men that took place in Syria April 4 seemingly contradicts what former National Security Advisor Susan Rice said a couple months ago. During an NPR interview on January 16, Ms. Rice claimed the Obama administration was “able to find a solution that didn’t necessitate the use of force that actually removed the chemical weapons that were known from Syria…” She said they accomplished this “by virtue of the diplomacy that we did with Russia…” (yes, Russia!) “We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and verifiably give up its chemical weapons stockpile.”
Pitifully, the truth about chemical weapons came out by way of those succumbing to the horrific effects of the sarin gas attack. Might the Obama administration’s so-called “diplomacy” really be collusion with Russia to keep Assad in power to secure the Iran “deal”?
Years back, Rice seemed to grab rationalizations from thin air to explain away the attacks in Benghazi, Libya. Rice stood by the ludicrous claim that Benghazi burned and people died because of a video until truth rose from the ashes like a phoenix to show the catalyst was really a terrorist attack, inconveniently contradicting Barack Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign rhetoric suggesting al Qaeda was of little threat and on the run.
A Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by Judicial Watch suggests the Benghazi lies came from the top. Six weeks before the 2012 election, Ben Rhodes, an assistant to the president and deputy national security advisor for strategic communications instructed recipients to communicate: “…the protests are rooted in an Internet video, and not a broad failure of policy” and “to reinforce the president and administration’s strength and steadiness in dealing with difficult challenges.”
Most recently, Rice is in the news for her alleged ties to the unmasked identities of Trump campaign associates incidentally swept up in surveillance of foreign targets. On March 22, 2017, Rice said on PBS she knew nothing about surveillance of Trump officials, apparently assuming nothing would come from the freshly turned dirt Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes uncovered. Not long after, the truth surfaced that Rice not only knew about it, the Daily Caller reports Rice submitted the requests for unmasking.
Called out on it, Rice claimed the request to unmask several Trump campaign and transition officials wasn’t politically motivated. Fred Fleitz, a former CIA analyst, says it’s “hard to fathom” how it wasn’t politically motivated. In a Fox News op-ed, Fleitz wrote, “Rice’s denials don’t add up.”
For those living in Mythomania, facts don’t need to add up because truth is a moving target. They’ll tell you two plus two equals five if it gets them closer to their goal.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) believes Rice committed a crime and should be forced to testify under oath. Even if she does testify, she’ll probably plead the fifth as did so many Obama administration officials.
For the rest of us, it’s important to remember there is such a thing as absolute truth and it is not relative to mood or circumstance or public perception or personal preference or political party. Therefore, we haven’t the luxury of customizing it to our liking, despite how much something is accepted by society. Wrong will never become right and lies will never become truth.
In short, truth is truth.
If we believe otherwise, we may get what we want temporarily -- like Obama got his second term -- but we’ll lose ourselves along the way, as we slide down that slippery slope toward Mythomania.
©2017 Susan Stamper Brown Susan lives in Alaska and writes about culture, politics and current events. She is a regular contributor to Townhall, The Christian Post and Right Wing News. Susan’s nationally syndicated column is published in scores of newspapers and publications across the U.S. She writes about politics, culture and media and was selected as one of America’s 50 Best Conservative writers for 2015 and 2016. Contact her by Facebook or at [email protected]. |
Wes Duenkel October 3, 2017
Keeping track of mileage, like birthdays, after a certain age is perhaps too depressing to document. As the years tick by with increasing velocity, it’s human nature to look fondly on past. So while it might seem attractive to continue claiming one’s age as twenty-nine well beyond that mark, it’s rather inconvenient when the odometer on your 1994-1998 Mustang stops spinning.
The odometer on our 1995 Mustang GT gave up the ghost at after two decades and 110,515 miles of service. Luckily for us, Late Model Restoration offers an inexpensive way to get those odometers back into action: their Odometer Repair kit. While we had the gauge cluster out, we added LMR’s White Face Gauge kit and Diode Dynamics LED bulb set to our much-loved SN95’s gauges a, uh, “facelift.”
In the end, we not only got our odometer function back, but our gauges gained a brighter, modern look—during night and day.
1. The odometer on our 1995 Mustang GT gave up the ghost at after two decades and 110,515 miles of service.
2. Luckily for us, Late Model Restoration offers an inexpensive way to get those odometers back into action: their Odometer Repair kit. While we had the gauge cluster out, we added LMR’s White Face Gauge kit and Diode Dynamics LED bulb set to our much-loved SN95’s gauges a, uh, “facelift.”
3. We began the procedure by removing the light switch knob using a small screwdriver to release the clip holding it onto the headlight switch shaft.
4. After removing the two T20 Torx screws at the top of the bezel, we removed the bezel by pulling gently around its perimeter to release the retaining clips.
5. Next, we removed the instrument cluster’s four mounting screws with a T20 socket.
6. With the gauge cluster free, we unplugged the two harness connectors leading to the cluster.
7. Next, we removed the screws retaining the gauge cluster cover and set the cover aside.
8. The cover hides this last screw, so we removed it as well.
9. We used a plastic prying tool to free the gauges from the backing plate.
10. Then, we removed all three gauge panels from the backing plate.
11. With the speedometer flipped over, we then removed the odometer motor from the housing.
12. With the motor removed, we used a pliers to pull the black plastic driven gear from the housing.
13. It’s not a mystery why our odometer stopped working. The driven gear’s plastic was soft, brittle, and missing teeth. This is why our odometer stopped working.
14. After pulling off the OEM worm gear from the motor, we pushed on the new gear from Late Model Restoration Supply.
15. Next, next, we installed the new odometer gear into the speedometer housing and remounted the motor.
16. With the odometer gear replacement task complete, we prepped the gauge faces for the white decals. First, we removed the gauge needle pins from the gauge face.
17. Since we had the cluster removed from the car, we used a flashlight to ease alignment of the white face decals with the translucent areas of the gauges.
18. We peeled a white face gauge decal from its backing and sprayed it with mild soapy water.
19. Next, we carefully threaded the needle through the decal’s hole and around the needlbe base.
20. After carefully aligning the transparent areas of the decals with the translucent areas of the gauges, we used an old credit card to squeegee the soapy water out from under the decal.
21. After the decals dried, we replaced the gauge cluster cover.
22. Before reinstalling the gauge cluster, we removed the dim incandescent bulbs so we could replace them with LED bulbs.
23. The bulbs click into the receptacles just like the OEM pieces, but are much brighter.
24. With the gauge cluster clean and refreshed, we reinstalled it into our much-loved 1995 GT.
25. Not only does our odometer work properly (it moved a mile!) the white face gauge kit and LED bulbs gave our instruments a brighter, modern look. |
It’s been one of my major pet peeves on both Android and iOS: the total and utter lack of consistency. Applications – whether first party or third party – all seem to live on islands, doing their own thing, making their own design choices regarding basic UI interactions, developing their own non-standard buttons and controls. Consistency died five years ago, and nobody seems to care but me.
As a proponent of what is now called the old school of UI design, I believe consistency is one of the most important aspects of proper user interface design. A consistent interface requires less learning, because users can carry over their experience from one application to the next, making the whole experience of using a UI more fluid. Applications should be the means to an end – not the end itself.
The release of the iPhone, and more specifically of the App Store, changed user interface design practically overnight. A lot of people focus on the shift to finger input as the biggest change the iPhone caused in UI design, but in reality, the move from thin stylus to fat stylus (the finger) isn’t that big a shift at all. No, for me, the biggest change in UI design caused by the iPhone, and later Android, is that ‘consistency’ lost its status as one of the main pillars of proper UI design.
Three reasons lie at the root of this underreported, massive shift. The first is conceptual, the second practical, and the third consequential.
Conceptual
iOS popularised a single-tasking interface, where only one application is visible at any given time – quite the far cry from desktops and laptops where we have lots of different applications running at once (or at least have the ability to do so). iOS obviously didn’t invent the concept; in fact, it’s as old as computing itself. Even in the mobile world, iOS just built on that which came before, since both PalmOS and Windows Mobile used the exact same single-tasking focus.
The consequence is that the application pretty much becomes the device. It’s the sole focus, the sole star of the show, with the operating system reduced to a status bar at the top of the screen. It’s quite similar to how game consoles have been operating for ages; in fact, older consoles generally couldn’t boot into a stand-alone, non-game operating system at all.*
As with anything under a spotlight, this has consequences. If all the user sees is a single application, deviations from UI standards and conventions don’t jump out as much, and developers can more easily experiment with changing the appearance or – worse yet – the behaviour of UI elements, or even create entirely new ones that have no equivalents in the rest of the operating system or application base. Since the user will never see applications side-by-side, these deviations don’t stand out visually (but they do stand out behaviourally).
Given this level of freedom to design the appearance of an application, the application itself becomes the focal point, instead of the task it is supposed to accomplish. We have entire websites dedicated to how an application looks, instead of to how it works. It is, perhaps, an analogy of how computer technology is perceived these days – style over substance, ‘it looks good so it must work well’. If some website reports on a new application for iOS or Android, the first few comments will almost inevitably be about how the application looks – not about if the application works.
We’ve reached a point where it’s entirely acceptable to reduce functionality just to make an application look good. We give more accolades to a developer who designs a pretty but functionally crippled application than to a developer who creates a highly functional and useful, but less pretty application. In my view, removing functionality because you don’t know how to properly integrate it into your UI is a massive cop-out, an admission of failure, the equivalent of throwing your hands in the air, shouting ‘I give up, I know my application needs this functionality but because I don’t know how to integrate it, I’ll just claim I didn’t include it because users don’t need it’.
Because the application itself has become the focal point, the designers have taken over, and they will inevitably feel constrained by the limits imposed upon them by human interface guidelines and commonly accepted user interface standards. The end result is that every application looks and works differently, making it very hard to carry over the experience from one application to the next.
Consistency suffers.
Practical
The smartphone market (and to a lesser degree, the tablet market) is divided up in two segments. iOS and Android are both highly desirable targets for mobile application developers, and as such, it’s becoming very hard to ignore one or the other and focus on just one. Instagram, Flipboard, Instapaper – even platform staples had to face the music and move to Android, sometimes kicking and screaming.
This has had a crucial effect on application development. I can’t count how many times I downloaded an Android application, only to realise it was a straight iOS port without any effort put into properly integrating it with Android UI conventions and standards. A logical consequence of the mobile application business not being as profitable as some make it out to be; most developers simply don’t have the time and money to do it properly.
Some applications take an entirely different approach to ‘solve’ this problem, by using lowest common denominator technologies. The official Google Gmail application for iOS is basically just a web page, and the Facebook application relies on HTML as well to display timelines. Both use entirely non-standard UI elements and conventions, of course (in addition, performance suffers for it, but that’s another story altogether).
Whatever the case – straight UI port or lowest common denominator technologies – consistency suffers.
Consequential
The third and final cause of the death of consistency is the sheer size of the App Store and the Google Play Store. Each of these is now populated by literally hundreds of thousands of applications, with every type of application having dozens, if not hundreds, of similar alternatives. In order to not drown in this highly competitive tidal wave of applications, you need to stand out from the crowd.
A highly distinctive interface is the best way to do this. If you were to follow all the standard UI conventions of a platform, you wouldn’t stand out at all, and would risk not being chosen among your flashier – but potentially less functional – competitors. It’s the equivalent of television commercials and web advertisements trying to stand out through motion, sound, pop-ups, screen-covers, flashing, and so on. “Hello, you there! Notice me! Notice me!”
If custom UI elements are required to stand out, they are added. If UI conventions need to be broken in order to differentiate from the crowd, so be it. If we lose functionality in the process – who cares, reviews will focus on how good we look anyway. Again – consistency suffers.
Mourning
In the smartphone and tablet age, the application has become the star. The days of yore, where the goal of an application was to disappear and blend in with the rest of the system as much as possible so that users could focus on getting the task done instead of on the application itself, are gone. Instead, applications have become goals in and of themselves, rather than just being the means to an end.
My ideal application is one that I don’t care about because it’s so non-distinctive, invisible and integrated into the system I barely notice it’s even there in the first place. During its heydays, GNOME 2.x represented this ideal better than anything else (in my view). GNOME 2.x sported an almost perfect behavioural and visual integration across the entire desktop environment, making it one of my personal favourite UIs of all time. KDE 3.x had incredibly tight behavioural integration, but, in my opinion, failed a bit on the visual side. Windows has been an utter mess for a long time, and Mac OS X started out okay, but once brushed metal and the wood panelling were introduced, it pretty much went downhill from there – and is still going down.
And my desire for applications to be invisible is, of course, the exact problem. A highly consistent interface is one where applications do not stand out, where they are designed specifically to blend in instead of drawing attention. This goes against the very fibres of many designers, who, understandably, want to make a statement, a demonstration of their abilities. On top of that, they need to stand out among the loads and loads of applications in the application stores.
Sadly – I, as a user, suffer from it. I don’t like using iOS. I don’t like using Android. Almost every application does things just a little bit differently, has elements in just a slightly different place, and looks just a bit different from everything else. I have to think too much about the application itself, when I should be dedicating all my attention to the task at hand.
I know this is a lost battle. I know I’m not even in the majority anymore – consistency lost its status as one of the main pillars of proper UI design almost instantly after the release of the iPhone. People who stood next to me on the barricades, demanding proper UI design, people who blasted Apple for brushed metal, people who blasted Windows for its lack of consistency, those same people smiled nervously while they stopped advocating consistency virtually overnight.
Consistency became a casualty almost nobody ever talked about. A dead body we silently buried in the forest, with an unwritten and unmentioned pact never to talk about the incident ever again. Consistency is now a dirty word, something that is seen as a burden, a yoke, a nuisance, a restriction. It has to be avoided at all costs to ensure that your application stands out; it has to be avoided at all costs to let the designer have free reign.
I mourn the death of consistency. I may be alone in doing so, but every death deserves a tear. |
About
Get YOUR Kicks on Route 66!
I have launched this Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a documentary film about 5 superstars of the Scottish music scene as they play their way across America. No matter where you live in the world, you can help this film become a reality.
U.S. Highway 66 -- popularly known as Route 66 or the Mother Road -- holds a special place in American consciousness and evokes images of simpler times, mom and pop businesses, and the icons of a mobile nation on the road. Running through the nation’s heartland from Chicago to Santa Monica, the legendary road passes through many picturesque places, including my own home town, South Pasadena, California.
In April an all-star cast of bagpipers and drummers is taking to the road on a historic tour down Route 66, performing concerts and teaching workshops in what is being dubbed “Pipes & Sticks on Route 66.” Pipers Stuart Liddell, Willie McCallum, and Angus MacColl and snare drummer Jim Kilpatrick MBE, all from Scotland, are being joined by bass drummer and percussionist Mike Cole from Chicago. (click on names to see each player's video)
The five players are considered to be “the best of the best” in the world of piping and drumming. Each member of the group has won every important solo piping and drumming award several times. The players are well-known for their incredible talent and for their entertaining way on the stage. Concerts will consist of traditional tunes as well as crowd-pleasing numbers frequently requested. Humor will be an integral part of the concerts and audience participation is expected.
The guys approached me and asked if I’d like to make a documentary about the adventure. I didn’t have to think too hard about it as it seemed like the trip of a lifetime with all the potential of being a really entertaining film. My previous feature documentary, ON THE DAY: The Story of the Spirit of Scotland Pipe Band, was totally funded by contributions from the piping and Scottish community from around the world – and that was before I knew about Kickstarter. Last summer, I launched a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund the On The Day 3-Disc Collector’s Box Set, so now I’m reaching out to you again to make this project a reality.
Make sure you watch the video at the TOP OF THE PAGE and check out your rewards to the RIGHT >.
ABOUT THE GOAL AMOUNT
I want you to know that the $66,000 goal is the bare bones minimum amount to get the documentary shot and into the first phase of post-production, but does not cover the full budget of close to $200,000. Every penny will go into the production with no contingency and no salary to me. I hope the pledges will take us beyond the minimum goal so that the film will have even more production value, and I can be paid for my many months of work. And remember, Kickstarter is an all or nothing proposition: if the goal is not met, I get nothing and you pay nothing!
April 5 Chicago MEET & GREET Mo Dailey's Pub & Grille
April 7 Chicago CONCERT Irish American Heritage Center*
April 8 St. Louis JAM SESSION The Scottish Arms
April 10 Tulsa CONCERT Oklahoma State University*
April 11 Oklahoma City MUSIC TRIBUTE Memorial Park
April 12 Lubbock CONCERT Cactus Theatre*
April 14 Albuquerque CONCERT El Rey Theatre*
April 15 Albuquerque WORKSHOP for pipers & drummers
April 17 Flagstaff CONCERT American Legion Hall
April 18 The Grand Canyon
April 20 Pasadena PUB CRAWL on Colorado Blvd., Old Pasadena
April 21 Pasadena WORKSHOP 12pm-4pm for pipers & drummer
April 21 Pasadena CONCERT Westminster Presbyterian Church*
* Click the link to order your tickets now! Like us on FACEBOOK.
What if you want more rewards than those offered at your pledge level? The answer is at the bottom of the page under FAQ's.
More rewards will be added in the weeks ahead. So keep checking back in. You can donate again and again to get more rewards!
Thanks! |
You might remember that late last year, Congress passed the America Invents Act, a largely toothless law that fails to address many of the biggest problems facing the patent system. In implementing that new law, the Patent and Trademark Office issued proposed guidelines for certain supplemental examination procedures. The PTO also recommended a huge increase in fees for filing certain patent reexaminations. As you might guess, this is a terrible idea.
The reexam process is an essential part of the patent ecosystem. It forms the basis for our Patent Busting Project and allows us to attack dangerous and overbroad patents like those that are asserted against cash-strapped municipalities.
It's vitally important that public interest groups like EFF and small entities who may lack substantial resources be able to participate in reexams at the PTO. Raising the fees for filing reexams to $17,750 (for filing alone!) promises to discourage that important third-party participation, which the Patent Office claims to care much about. Today, we filed comments with the Patent Office saying as much, and urging the Office to reconsider the fee increase – or at least carve out an exception for public interest groups and other small entities. The Patent Office should use this opportunity to encourage the type of participation in the reexam process that benefits inventors, users, and an agenda that promotes innovation. |
netjeff.com Humor collection Star Trek: The Next Generation Drinking Game
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Star Trek: The Next Generation Drinking Game
Hey Folks, It has long been said that college students will take any and every opportunity to drink, regardless of the circumstances. It's true... we will. And we also manage to make it fun... So the next time you're watching Star Trek, pull this out and drink per each successfully met condition. Guaranteed to get you LOADED. Have a good week. Greg Williams 38williams(at)cua.edu STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION DRINKING GAME RULES (To be played while watching the show.) Have one sip of beer per successfully met condition Anybody: 'Open hailing frequencies' 'Medical emergency' 'Belay that order' 'Energise' 'Hell','Damn' and other swearing. See Rikers special swearing rules. Picard: 'Make it so' 'Engage' 'Come' - two if said in personal quarters 'Captain's log' - two if supplemental 'Proceed' 'Number One' Worf: 'Impressive' 'Admirable' 'Grrrrr' ( A simple sneer qualifies) Data: 'Fascinating' 'Accessing' DRINK WHENEVER: Riker swears - two drinks; three if it's 'hell'; whole beer if he asks 'what the hell is going on' Riker walks forward as if he's trying to knock an imaginary door down with his forehead. A female character has flawless makeup after she's been through the ringer. Picard straightens his uniform Data's innards are revealed Data uses his strength Data is cut off mid sentence - two drinks if it's a list of synonyms. Data gripes about his inability to perceive human emotion Geordie's visor is taken or knocked off Georgie gets bitched out for faulty engine, warp drive, etc. Beverly can't figure out some bizarre medical problem Deanna senses something really shocking Deanna gives us Betazoid insight into something really obvious O'Brien has a line (this gets brutal after the third season - weak drinkers may pass) A crew member drinks - two if it's Picard; three if it's Picard drinking tea; four if the tea is identified as Earl Grey. A bridge officer is shown in casual clothes (one drink per scene, per officer) = two drinks if it's Beverly in a sweater; two drinks if it's Picard in his chest revealing bedwear. A bridge officer appears in dress uniform (one drink per scene, per officer) Every time somebody is addressed by his or her first name - two if there's some kind of sexual tension going on. Every time they use transporter room three. A shuttle craft seems like an unsafe place to be. Somebody reads a book. Somebody preaches the Prime Directive - two if it's NOT Picard Somebody preaches about Humanity's Unique Potential Picard has an accident or is attacked - two drink; three if it draws blood Picard is possessed - four drinks An 'old earth saying' is brought up - two if Data has to have it explained to him. Patrick Stewart tries to speak French Wesley talks back to his Mom. Somebody implies that Ten Forward is a Happening Place They fade for an advertisement playing the 'ominous horns' Klingon is spoken - two drinks per scene in which Klingons are alone and have no obvious reason to speak English but do anyway. Each scene in which a nifty new Romulan ship is shown There's a token alien in the background with no lines - two if it's a Vulcan. Yellow Alert - one drink Red Alert - two drinks Intruder Alert - three drinks Another Captain or Star Fleet Command officer is on screen. There's a countdown Every time a bridge command is handed over The Enterprise crew avoids a confrontation instead of blasting away. Each scene in which the Enterprise actually fights (shots must be fired) - two drinks. Whole beer whenever the saucer section separates. They contact somebody on the communicator/intercom without going to a panel or touching anything. A communicator isn't working or is blocked - two if it's out of range. New Trek contradicts a fact from Old Trek (Unfortunately, players may be too drunk to adjudicate this rule) You're thirsty. ********************************************************************** _____..---========+^+=========---.._____ ______________________ __,-='=====____ ================== _____=====`= (._____________________I__) - _-=_/ `--------=+=--------' / /__...---===='---+---_' '------'---.___ - _ = _.-' `--------' Enjoy! G.D.W. (38williams(at)cua.edu) ************************************************************************** |
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is set to accept a giant national flag made by the Dalit community that was presented to Chief Minister Vijay Rupani but which officials reportedly refused to accept citing lack of space.
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Gandhi will accept the flag, about 125 feet wide and 83.3 feet high, when he visits the Dalit Shakti Kendra near Sanand on Thursday. Gandhi will be on a two-day visit to poll-bound Gujarat.
“India’s largest national flag was supposed to be handed over to Rupani, with a request that he take steps to end untouchability practices. But it was not accepted by officials of the Gandhinagar Collectorate on behalf of the Chief Minister saying ‘We don’t have enough space to keep the flag and shall inform once available’,” said Dalit leader Martin Macwan.
“This is the insult of an Indian national flag prepared by Dalits from 10 states,” said Macwan, who heads the Navsarjan Trust, which works for Scheduled Caste community in Gujarat.
“The flag is made out of khadi cloth and has been designed and coloured by 100 Dalit Shakti Kendra students and teachers who worked on it for 25 days… The 125 feet length of the flag signifies 125 years of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar’s birth anniversary this year,” added Macwan.
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“We approached the Chief Minister’s office on August 3… The CMO did not respond… Thereafter we approached the Collector who refused citing lack of space,” said Macwan. |
Methotrexate was first introduced in 1955 for leukemia and in 1986 became FDA approved for the treatment of adults with severe, active, rheumatoid arthritis or children with active polyarticular-course juvenile RA.
In rheumatology, MTX has been the first-line drug against which all other agents are judged. It is the preferred agent in early and late disease and has been the anchor drug to all combination therapies that have revolutionized antirheumatic therapy.
Although MTX has become the drug that rheumatologists love, it is the drug patients often have an aversion to. Patient reluctance or reactions to MTX are based largely on toxicity – some read on the internet and others experienced after a trial of MTX. Effective utilization of MTX requires a plan for risk communication and toxicity prevention and management.
Risk communication is the art of informing patients of the likely and unlikely or most dangerous side effects associated with a particular drug. The risk factors for MTX toxicity include improper instruction, wrongful dosing, not monitoring labs for renal insufficiency, hypoalbuminemia or dropping cell counts and lastly, concurrent use of drugs known to interact with MTX. Below is a review of the management and prevention of common/nuisance toxicities of MTX. Additionally, pearls of prevention and wisdom from the products package insert are found at the end of this article.
Common Mistakes and Myths in MTX Management.
Changing from oral to parenteral or changing from single weekly to split doses to lessen (GI) toxicity. The literature and research is clear that toxicity is related to MTX levels and that parenteral dosing yields higher MTX levels than oral and that split doses results in more MTX absorbtion. Thus split doses or parenteral doses will cause more toxicity, not less.
Using Folate to manage fatigue or oral ulcers. See vitamin A and dextromethorphan below.
Higher doses (above 15 or 20 mg per week) yields greater efficacy. The truth is that as you increase the dose, toxicity is more likely than efficacy. Moreover, recent studies like JESMR, CONCERTO and MUSICA have shown that lower doses (7.5-10mg) may be as effective as higher doses (15-20mg).
Nuisance Side Effects. The usual list here includes post-dosing painful oral ulcers, nausea, vomiting, GI discomfort, diarrhea, hair thinning, minor hepatic enzyme elevations and drug interactions. Rarely MTX causes colonic ulcerations.
The avoidance of many of these common nuisance side-effects was largely taught to me by a world-class pediatric oncologist, Dr. Bart Kamen (see end of article dedication). For these you need only rely upon the use of folate supplementation, vitamin A and dextromethorphan.
Folate Benefits : The utility and safety of folate supplementation with MTX use was reviewed by a Cochrane analysis that showed folate supplementation (low doses of ≤ 7 mg weekly) to be effective at lowering the frequency of GI side effects, protective against hepatic enzyme elevations and reduces the frequency of MTX discontinuations. Folates were not shown to have a significant effect on oral ulcerations due to MTX (although a protective “trend” was mentioned). Although I believe that folate supplementation may protect against the rare instance of MTX induced hypersensitivity pneumonitis, I can find no evidence to back this observation. For many leucovorin is given post MTX dosing as a means of preventing myelosuppression, GI toxicity, and neurotoxicity. Leucovorin is usually given within 24 to 36 hours of MTX to prevent toxicity.
: The utility and safety of folate supplementation with MTX use was reviewed by a Cochrane analysis that showed folate supplementation (low doses of ≤ 7 mg weekly) to be effective at lowering the frequency of GI side effects, protective against hepatic enzyme elevations and reduces the frequency of MTX discontinuations. Folates were not shown to have a significant effect on oral ulcerations due to MTX (although a protective “trend” was mentioned). Although I believe that folate supplementation may protect against the rare instance of MTX induced hypersensitivity pneumonitis, I can find no evidence to back this observation. For many leucovorin is given post MTX dosing as a means of preventing myelosuppression, GI toxicity, and neurotoxicity. Leucovorin is usually given within 24 to 36 hours of MTX to prevent toxicity. Vitamin A and Oral Ulceration : while the package insert for MTX states “…certain side effects such as mouth sores may be reduced by folate supplementation”, my experience suggests this is rarely so and the Cochrane review supports this non-association. Dr. Kamen taught me that when rats are given oral MTX, a severe enterocolitis ensues. However when these same rats are pre-treated with vitamin A – no such GI toxicity was observed. This led to our clinic study that showed Vitamin A given as 8,000 IU day was effective in nearly two-thirds of patients in reducing oral ulcerations and post-MTX nausea. It was less effective, but worthwhile, in reducing the diarrhea sometimes seen.
: while the package insert for MTX states “…certain side effects such as mouth sores may be reduced by folate supplementation”, my experience suggests this is rarely so and the Cochrane review supports this non-association. Dr. Kamen taught me that when rats are given oral MTX, a severe enterocolitis ensues. However when these same rats are pre-treated with vitamin A – no such GI toxicity was observed. This led to our clinic study that showed Vitamin A given as 8,000 IU day was effective in nearly two-thirds of patients in reducing oral ulcerations and post-MTX nausea. It was less effective, but worthwhile, in reducing the diarrhea sometimes seen. Dextromethorphan and the “Blahs” : Neurotoxicity is quite common with high-dose MTX chemotherapy (10% seizures) and more frequent than most realize with low-dose weekly MTX. A survey of my clinic patients showed that nearly 50% of my MTX patients admitted to some neurologic manifestations – usually manifest as post-MTX somnolence/fatigue or “the Blahs”, but may also include headache, cognitive dysfunction, impotence, blindness or numbness. Usually such symptoms last for 24-36 hours. Again, it was Dr. Kamen who taught me that the metabolism of MTX leads to excess homocysteine and that homocysteine leads to a number of excitogenic amines that includes homocyteic acid, amongst others. Interestingly these amines will noncompetitively bind NMDA receptors in the brain and presumeably mediate the neurotoxicities seen. NDMA binding can be noncompetitively inhibited by dextromethorphan. Dr. Kamen often related stories of children with leukemia who were receiving intrathecal MTX and would go into a coma. He would then perform his magic by taking a bottle of Robitussin DM and pouring down the NG tube so that his residents and fellows could watch the child awaken from the drug induced coma. This led to our study in 1999 that was published as an ACR abstract wherein we treated our MTX patients who had the “blahs” and showed again that two-thirds promptly responded and had less or no CNS symptoms. Hence we now recommend the use of dextromethorphan (20-50mg) be given weekly with the MTX dose and again 8-12 hours later. We usually prescribe this as a tablet (Mucinex DM).
: Neurotoxicity is quite common with high-dose MTX chemotherapy (10% seizures) and more frequent than most realize with low-dose weekly MTX. A survey of my clinic patients showed that nearly 50% of my MTX patients admitted to some neurologic manifestations – usually manifest as post-MTX somnolence/fatigue or “the Blahs”, but may also include headache, cognitive dysfunction, impotence, blindness or numbness. Usually such symptoms last for 24-36 hours. Again, it was Dr. Kamen who taught me that the metabolism of MTX leads to excess homocysteine and that homocysteine leads to a number of excitogenic amines that includes homocyteic acid, amongst others. Interestingly these amines will noncompetitively bind NMDA receptors in the brain and presumeably mediate the neurotoxicities seen. NDMA binding can be noncompetitively inhibited by dextromethorphan. Dr. Kamen often related stories of children with leukemia who were receiving intrathecal MTX and would go into a coma. He would then perform his magic by taking a bottle of Robitussin DM and pouring down the NG tube so that his residents and fellows could watch the child awaken from the drug induced coma. This led to our study in 1999 that was published as an ACR abstract wherein we treated our MTX patients who had the “blahs” and showed again that two-thirds promptly responded and had less or no CNS symptoms. Hence we now recommend the use of dextromethorphan (20-50mg) be given weekly with the MTX dose and again 8-12 hours later. We usually prescribe this as a tablet (Mucinex DM). Hepatic enzymes and Hepatotoxicity. As mentioned above the evidence shows that daily or weekly folate supplementation has a protective effect against hepatic enzyme elevation with an overall 77% relative risk reduction. Avoidance of hepatotoxicity is best accomplished by proper patient selection and prescribing and monitoring. This was first highlighted by the seminal 1994 paper wherein Kremer et al published the recommended guidelines for monitoring of MTX toxicity. They and others have pointed out that regular monitoring of hepatic enzymes is necessary and will show that hepatic enzyme elevations during MTX therapy is a frequent and transient problem, but that persistent elevations may indicate liver pathology and the need for further evaluation.
Severe Toxicity Management: MTX is dialyzable – hence hemodialysis and hemoperfusion have been successfully used in patients with toxic MTX levels. Maintenance of renal function, hydration, leucovorin rescue, G-CSF, transfusions and/or alkalinization of the urine may also be necessary in some patients. Plasmapheresis has less and limited value.
Package Insert Exerpts
- Methotrexate elimination is reduced in patients with impaired renal function, ascites, or pleural effusions. Such patients require especially careful monitoring for toxicity, and require dose reduction or, in some cases, discontinuation of methotrexate administration.
- Unexpectedly severe (sometimes fatal) bone marrow suppression, aplastic anemia, and gastrointestinal toxicity have been reported with concomitant administration of methotrexate (usually in high dosage) along with some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). Despite the potential interactions, studies of methotrexate in patients with rheumatoid arthritis have usually included concurrent use of constant dosage regimens of NSAIDs, without apparent problems. It should be appreciated, however, that the doses used in rheumatoid arthritis (7.5 to 20 mg/week) are somewhat lower than those used in psoriasis and that larger doses could lead to unexpected toxicity.
- Patients with psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis with alcoholism, alcoholic liver disease or other chronic liver disease should not receive methotrexate.
- Patients with psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis who have overt or laboratory evidence of immunodeficiency syndromes should not receive methotrexate.
- Patients with psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis who have preexisting blood dyscrasias, such as bone marrow hypoplasia, leukopenia, thrombocytopenia or significant anemia, should not receive methotrexate.
- Methotrexate is partially bound to serum albumin, and toxicity may be increased because of displacement by certain drugs, such as salicylates, phenylbutazone, phenytoin, and sulfonamides. Renal tubular transport is also diminished by probenecid; use of methotrexate with this drug should be carefully monitored. Oral antibiotics such as tetracycline, chloramphenicol, and nonabsorbable broad spectrum antibiotics, may decrease intestinal absorption of methotrexate or interfere with the enterohepatic circulation by inhibiting bowel flora and suppressing metabolism of the drug by bacteria.
- Drug interaction with trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (Bactrim) may rarely lead to bone marrow suppression, probably from an additive anti-folate effect and displacement of MTX binding to albumin.
- Penicillins may reduce the renal clearance of methotrexate; increased serum concentrations of methotrexate with concomitant hematologic and gastrointestinal toxicity have been observed with methotrexate. Use of methotrexate with penicillins should be carefully monitored.
- The potential for increased hepatotoxicity when methotrexate is administered with other hepatotoxic agents has not been evaluated. However, hepatotoxicity has been reported in such cases. Therefore, patients receiving concomitant therapy with methotrexate and other potential hepatotoxins (eg, azathioprine, retinoids, sulfasalazine) should be closely monitored for possible increased risk of hepatotoxicity.
- Methotrexate may decrease the clearance of theophylline; theophylline levels should be monitored when used concurrently with methotrexate.
- Pregnancy should be avoided if either partner is receiving methotrexate; during and for a minimum of three months after therapy for male patients, and during and for at least one ovulatory cycle after therapy for female patients
This article is dedicated to the brilliance of Dr. Barton Kamen (1949-2012) – a pediatric oncologist who taught me and thousands of physician about the art of medicine and specifically, about the safe use of methotrexate. Bart invented the infusion pump, was an exceptional pediatrician and magician, and a giant of a translational researcher and folate scientist. You can read more about him here.
Dr. Barton Kamen
References
Drachtman RA, Cole PD, Golden CB, James SJ, Melnyk S, Aisner J, Kamen BA. Dextromethorphan is effective in the treatment of subacute methotrexate neurotoxicity. Pediatr Hematol Oncol. 2002 Jul-Aug;19(5):319-27
Shea B, et al. Folic acid and folinic acid for reducing side effects in patients receiving methotrexate for rheumatoid arthritis. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2013 May 31 |
Let's examine the "so-called proofs" of the earth's rotundity. Most people automatically assume that the hull of a ship disappears before the mast of the ship. This is based on a false premise that the earth is a sphere causing ships to bow below a curvature that doesn't exist. Since most do not think about ships far out at sea can be restored with a telescope, they end up with a false conclusion. If you assert the earth is sphere based on Eratosthenes's shadow experiment, you will quickly be proven wrong just by using observable evidence based on mathematics.
The circumference of the earth usually accepted as fact without ever verifying any evidence to make sure the claim is factual. Most will argue that because the bottom of an outward bound ship disappears before the mast that the water is curved. Have you ever tested this theory out for yourself? Assuming that the earth is a sphere is an illogical leap of faith and it is disproven by a simple telescope or a high powered lens camera.
Even science organizations deny the photos of NASA that show a perfectly round earth. Modern science today refutes the round earth claim that the world has come to believe. Eratosthenes claimed the earth to be about 24,901 miles in circumference. This is actually proven wrong using visual evidence.
Now scientists believe the earth is shaped like a pear. If this is the case, why then do we still teach children in public schools that the earth is perfectly round? Even liars like DeGrasse Tyson who has been on my TV show admits that the earth is not a perfect sphere. It's not even close. If this is the case and the liars are now changing their tune about the shape of the earth, Pastor Ernest is certain that the earth is flat. |
We run through 10 of the most beautiful castles in Scotland, let us know if you think we have left any out. A visit to Scotland would surely be incomplete without becoming caught up in the turbulent history and fascinating stories that lay behind the stone walls of its many castles. Scattered across the country, […]
We run through 10 of the most beautiful castles in Scotland, let us know if you think we have left any out.
A visit to Scotland would surely be incomplete without becoming caught up in the turbulent history and fascinating stories that lay behind the stone walls of its many castles. Scattered across the country, over two thousand magnificent castles offer travellers a wondrous serving of escapism amongst the wilderness of the Scottish landscape. Here, we round up the top ten castles that should hastily be scribbled into your Scottish bucket list…
Dunnottar Castle
On the edge of the North Sea, just south of Stonehaven, stands the formidable fortress of Dunnottar Castle. Restored in 1925, the castle ruins sit atop a huge, rocky outcrop, surrounded almost entirely by steep cliffs that plummet to the waters below. A visit to Dunnottar is well worth the journey if only to watch the evening sun illuminate the castle’s jagged exterior. It’s a breath-taking view that you won’t soon forget.
A post shared by Craig Anderson | Scotland (@ardentform) on Jan 31, 2017 at 12:19am PST
Inveraray Castle
Located on the shore of Loch Fine, the longest sea loch in Scotland, Inveraray Castle is often considered to be a country house or stately home. But its spectacular exterior, which has previously been captured on camera in Downton Abbey’s 2012 Christmas Special, is undoubtedly fit for a king. Steep conical turrets and a third floor were added to the structure in 1877 after a fire had spread through its interior, whilst a second fire in 1975 put the future of the castle in jeopardy. Following extensive restoration however, Inveraray now overlooks 16 acres of beautiful gardens that can be enjoyed by visitors all year round.
A post shared by Kazim Ghafoor (@kazimghafoor) on Aug 23, 2017 at 11:30am PDT
Castle Stalker
This four storey, tower keep on Loch Laich is notoriously difficult to visit. Surrounded by water and privately owned, there are only a limited number of tours that invite visitors through its doors each year. Yet, the castle, and its magnificently rugged backdrop provided by the Morvern Hills, is even more captivating when seen from afar. Visible even from the A828, between Oban and Glencoe, visitors might recognise Castle Stalker by another name – one which is perhaps more peculiar than its own – ‘The Castle of Aaaaaaaaaaaarghh’ from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
A post shared by Gordon (@gord.cook) on Aug 28, 2017 at 11:21am PDT
Kilchurn Castle
At the head of Loch Awe stands a five storey tower house belonging to Kilchurn Castle. Built in the 1400s by the first Lord of Glenorchy, the fact that this tower still stands is remarkable in its own right. For visitors though, who may reach the site by boat from Lochawe Pier, the chance to walk Kilchurn’s battlements and relish in the immeasurable view it provides is a truly invigorating and exceptional experience.
A post shared by Daniel Casson ?? (@dpc_photography_) on Jul 10, 2017 at 12:05pm PDT
Eilean Donan Castle
Situated on its own tidal island, Eilean Donan Castle marks the point where Loch Duich, Loch Long and Loch Alsh unite. Accessible by a single stone bridge, this 13th Century castle was once a magnificent family home, with views across the water reflecting the mountains of Kintail in its ripples. Whilst, in 2001, the island’s recorded population stood at a grand total of one, the most recent census shows that even the island’s final resident has disappeared.
Special glow over a special castle ❤️ A post shared by Connor Mollison | Scotland (@connormollison) on Aug 21, 2017 at 11:43am PDT
Craigievar Castle
Nestled in the heart of Aberdeenshire, Craigievar Castle is a Princess’ dream. With its sculpted turrets and tickled pink exterior, it’s widely rumoured that Craigievar’s Scottish Baronial architecture was the inspiration behind Walt Disney’s famous castle motif. Visiting Craigievar on a dry day allows visitors to explore the castle’s sweeping gardens; perhaps even following one of its two waymarked walks.
A post shared by Mikaela Eriksson (@mika.eriksson) on Aug 11, 2017 at 6:58am PDT
Caerlaverock Castle
If ever you need inspiration for building a castle, Caerlaverock Castle would be it. Complete with picture-perfect moat and a grand, turreted entrance, Caelaverock truly looks as though it has been torn from the pages of medieval history books. Standing on the southern coast of Scotland, the strength of this triangular stronghold is proven by the substantial ruin that remains there to this day. The surrounding area is internationally recognised for its waterfowl and wading birds, whilst smaller visitors will be delighted by Caerlaverock’s castle themed adventure park.
A post shared by Maggie Cristler (@europecastlespalaces) on Feb 24, 2016 at 1:24pm PST
Dunvegan Castle
First built in the 13th Century, Dunvegan castle was remodelled as a mock medieval build some 600 years later. Situated just a mile to the north of Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, the castle stands as the longest continuously inhabited castle in Scotland. Steeped in over 800 years of Clan history, the magnificent grounds of Dunvegan are as intriguing as they are beautiful; with a stunning maze of water features, walled gardens and glass houses offering a sanctuary to those that visit.
A post shared by laura pennafort (@laupennafort) on Aug 3, 2017 at 4:35pm PDT
Duart Castle
Duart Castle became the ancestral home of Clan MacLean after having been included in a dowry received by the 5th Clan Chief in 1350. Brought back from ruin in 1911, Duart Castle on the Isle of Mull now offers its visitors action packed experiences swathed in the spirit of Duart. After walking amongst its shadowy dungeons, visitors will be relieved to emerge into the swirl of fresh Scottish air atop the castles battlements. Whilst below, events in the grounds include ghost tours, displays of swordsmanship and theatre company performances.
A post shared by The Highland Collective (@thehighlandcollective) on Jul 22, 2017 at 12:31pm PDT
Ardvreck Castle
Ever since fire devastated Ardvreck Castle in mysterious circumstances in 1737, its gnarled remains have become a striking feature amongst its spectacular mountain surroundings. Historians believe that Ardvreck was once a formidable structure, with a stunning walled garden and magnificent courtyard. Now however, when waters rise from Loch Assynt, Ardvreck can often be cut off from the mainland – leaving little more than an enthralling, knotted mass of stone emerging from the ground.
A post shared by The Highland Collective (@thehighlandcollective) on Jul 26, 2017 at 11:01am PDT
Think our list should have been different? Let us know your bucket list favourites in the comments below. |
Deportes
Redacción SDPnoticias.com jue 09 feb 2017 21:59
El Atlético de Madrid y el Atlético San Luis llegarían un acuerdo en los próximos días Foto propiedad de: Tomada de AS.com
Una delegación ‘colchonera’ llegará a México para afinar los detalles
La alianza entre el Atlético de Madrid, el Gobierno del Estado y el Atlético San Luis por fin se hará oficial en días próximos.
El Consejero delegado del Atlético, Miguel Ángel Gil Marín, junto con el Director de Gestión Deportiva, José Manuel Díaz, así como los dueños del San Luis, se reunirán en las oficinas de la Federación Mexicana de Futbol para platicar del proyecto que regresará a San Luis a la segunda división.
De hacerse una realidad el proyecto, los involucrados se trasladarían a San Luis Potosí para firmar el convenio y hacerlo oficial.
El ‘Atleti’ desarrollará en San Luis un gran proyecto deportivo como ya lo ha hecho en China, India y Francia.
Con información de AS. |
Testimony in a lawsuit against the United States government is set to begin tomorrow as multiple individuals challenge the Homeland Battlefield Act in a New York City federal court.
The lawsuit is being brought by individuals concerned that the work they engage in could now lead the government to accuse them of being an “associated force” of terrorists as a result of the new law that was signed by President Barack Obama on New Year’s Eve last year.
Those involved in pushing the lawsuit hope Judge Katherine B. Forrest will issue a temporary restraining order so the process of repealing parts of the law can begin. However, they understand such a development is probably unlikely.
The plaintiffs bringing the case against the Homeland Battlefield Act—more commonly known as the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA)—have been dubbed by their attorneys as the “Freedom Seven.” They include: Chris Hedges, a journalist; Daniel Ellsberg, who is known for releasing the Pentagon Papers; Noam Chomsky, a well-known writer; Icelandic MP Birgitta Jonsdottir; Tangerine Bolen, founder of RevolutionTruth.org; Kai Wargalla, deputy director of Revolution Truth and founder of Occupy London; and Alexa O’Brien, journalist and founder of US Day of Rage.
All have done work on civil liberties and human rights and are concerned that the law’s language is “dangerously vague” and grants the US government the power to “arrest any American citizen (or anyone, anywhere) without warrant and to indefinitely detain them without any charge.”
In particular, they call attention to Section 1021 of the law. This section defines a “covered person,” who could be subject to detention as “a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or ‘associated forces’ that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.” What “substantially supported,” “directly supported,” or “associated forces” means is undefined. They see this as a tool that could be used to suspend due process for anyone deemed to have been involved in “hostilities against the United States.” And so, those behind the lawsuit conclude the Homeland Battlefield Act violates the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Eight Amendments of the US Constitution.
Bolen, who helped launch this lawsuit with multiple plaintiffs, says she felt prompted to sue the US government because of her work “defending WikiLeaks and Bradley Manning.” She also has hosted panels with Middle East revolutionaries and activists. “Given the language of the law under the NDAA,” she believes she could be accused of being an “associated force.”
“[It] caused a lot of fear and distress” in multiple activist communities when it passed last year, Bolen adds. “I saw this as an opportunity to seriously stand up and challenge” an egregious assault “on our civil liberties.”
O’Brien explains that she signed on as a plaintiff because she believes her work as a journalist and activist has made her a target of the United States government.
“Because of the passage of the Homeland Battlefield Act, which gives the government frightening new powers, I’ve had to curtail my journalism and activism,” she states.
As a founder of US Day of Rage, she has been subject to false allegations of connections to Al Qaeda that have deeply impacted her ability to conduct her work openly and freely. These allegations have been taken seriously by US government agencies.
Hedges, O’Brien and Wargalla are scheduled to testify in court tomorrow. They each had to be deposed by the government before the scheduled hearing.
Hedges described his deposition by assistant US attorney Benjamin H. Torrance, which took place in a “polite conference room”:
It is in conference rooms like this one, where attorneys speak in the arcane and formal language of legal statutes, that we lose or save our civil liberties. The 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force Act, the employment of the Espionage Act by the Obama White House against six suspected whistle-blowers and leakers, and the Homeland Battlefield Bill have crippled the work of investigative reporters in every major newsroom in the country. Government sources that once provided information to counter official narratives and lies have largely severed contact with the press. They are acutely aware that there is no longer any legal protection for those who dissent or who expose the crimes of state. The NDAA threw in a new and dangerous component that permits the government not only to silence journalists but imprison them and deny them due process because they “substantially supported” terrorist groups or “associated forces.”
Hedges noted the deposition would help the judge determine if he had standing to challenge the Homeland Battlefield Act.
O’Brien says of her deposition, “Having never been deposed before, the process is nerve-wracking. I concur with Mr. Hedges that the exchange is very polite but there is a sense of the very seriousness and the gravity of the matter.” She adds, “It’s not something that one enters into lightly.”
Dr. Cornel West, an author and teacher at Princeton University, and Naomi Wolf, an author, may become plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
In anticipation of the hearing tomorrow, Wolf has an article up at The Guardian, which details several instances where she declined to meet with individuals because of the Homeland Battlefield Law. Here’s one example:
…In November 2011, I declined, in writing, a proposed meeting with Vaughan Smith and Julian Assange, because of statements made by high-level United States officials regarding their belief that Assange is a terrorist, as well as the ongoing Department of Justice investigation, which, as I understand it, could lead to terrorism and/or espionage charges against him…
She also has declined to meet with a group in London that works with former Guantanamo detainees and a reporter who produced a documentary on “the bombardment of Gaza.”
Jonsdottir has produced a video statement but the State Department is attempting to deny her the right to have her testimony heard in court. This is alarming especially when considering the fact that the Justice Department has subpoenaed her Twitter account for information on her association and involvement with staff members of WikiLeaks.
The hearing tomorrow is the first stage of this lawsuit. It is the center of a “Stop NDAA” campaign that the grassroots activism organization Demand Progress has come together with Revolution Truth to advance. So far over 45,000 emails have gone out to US Congress members.
The campaign has a “Round 2” planned which will involve opening up the lawsuit to the “entire US public and the world.”
One person, Ramy Mahmoud of Occupy Miami, is already being considered. On March 14, Miami-Dade cops raided an Occupy Miami “safehouse” after receiving a “bogus terrorism tip.” They asked Mahmoud, “Are you a Muslim?” and “Do you love this country?” as they pointed guns at them and stepped on their backs to see if they had weapons.
The instance may be the first “confluence of Occupy, the idea of terrorism and the NDAA.” The campaign is not sure, but the raid has moved the campaign to consider having Mahmoud sign up as a plaintiff.
Occupy Wall Street has planned a “silent march” from Foley Square to Union Square at 3 pm. Occupiers intend to “show solidarity” with the “Freedom Seven” and their “discontent with an authoritarian piece of legislation that destroys” American civil liberties.
The Occupy movement has shown great opposition to the NDAA since it began to move through Congress and was eventually signed into law. A national day of action was held in January. Occupy Wall Street conducted a flash mob action in Grand Central Station in New York during rush hour that brought attention to the new law.
Much of the backlash in December came from the fact that the law was to grant the military extraordinary powers to detain US citizens without trial. Obama issued a signing statement indicating he had reservations about the new law. But that didn’t remove the reality that this new power given to the military was codified into law.
The federal government claims individuals like the “Freedom Seven” have nothing to fear. “Associated forces” have to be “armed.” But, Carl Mayer, a lead attorney in the lawsuit, told Courthouse News the “armed group” requirement is absent from the text of the statute.
“If it only targeted armed groups, it would say that,” Mayer said in a phone interview, adding that the phrase “substantially support” is also problematic. “Those definitions are so broad and vague that they can encompass, journalists, lawyers, or even the judge, and they are undefined in the statute,” he added. Meanwhile, he says, the U.S. military undermined the alleged “armed group” requirement during hearings for the court-martial of alleged WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning. Prosecutors recently claimed that Manning supported al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula by allegedly leaking 700,000-plus files to WikiLeaks. “It gives the lie to what they’re doing,” Mayer said. “Now, they’re prosecuting Manning, who did not give armed support but leaked documents [to WikiLeaks], allegedly.”
Mayer contends, “The Homeland Battlefield Law is as Orwellian as its name implies. America is not a ‘battlefield’; it is a democratic republic.” Yet, the Homeland Battlefield Act subverts the rule of law to advance perpetual war against an enemy that is so undefined that any citizen could easily be accused of being an accessory to the enemy.
Just this month, the Executive Branch has expanded guidelines for the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) so that information on “non-terrorists” (otherwise known as US citizens) can be stored for five years. It has also asserted the authority to execute individuals abroad without charge or trial. When one considers how rapidly the imperial presidency appears to be growing, the lawsuit is the beginning of an important grassroots effort to challenge unchecked executive power in America. |
Twitter, Spotify and Reddit, and a huge swath of other websites were down or screwed up this morning. This was happening as hackers unleashed a large distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the servers of Dyn, a major DNS host. It’s probably safe to assume that the two situations are related.
Update 4:22 PM EST: Looks like this is probably going to get even worse before it gets any better. Dyn says they are being hit with a third wave of attacks. Dyn told CNBC the attack is “well planned and executed, coming from tens of millions IP addresses at same time.”
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Update 12:28 PM EST: Dyn says it is investigating yet another attack, causing the same massive outages experienced this morning. Based on emails from Gizmodo readers, this new wave of attacks seems to be affecting the West Coast of the United States and Europe. It’s so far unclear how the two attacks are related, but the outages are very similar.
In order to understand how one DDoS attack could take out so many websites, you have to understand how Domain Name Servers (DNS) work. Basically, they act as the Internet’s phone book and facilitate your request to go to a certain webpage and make sure you are taken to the right place. If the DNS provider that handles requests for Twitter is down, well, good luck getting to Twitter. Some websites are coming back for some users, but it doesn’t look like the problem is fully resolved.
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Dyn posted this update on its website: “Starting at 11:10 UTC on October 21th-Friday 2016 we began monitoring and mitigating a DDoS attack against our Dyn Managed DNS infrastructure. Some customers may experience increased DNS query latency and delayed zone propagation during this time. Updates will be posted as information becomes available.”
Here’s a list of websites that readers have told us they are having trouble accessing:
ActBlue
Basecamp
Big cartel
Box
Business Insider
CNN
Cleveland.com
Etsy
Github
Grubhub
Guardian.co.uk
HBO Now
Iheart.com (iHeartRadio)
Imgur
Intercom
Intercom.com
Okta
PayPal
People.com
Pinterest
Playstation Network
Recode
Reddit
Seamless
Spotify
Squarespace Customer Sites
Starbucks rewards/gift cards
Storify.com
The Verge
Twillo
Twitter
Urbandictionary.com (lol)
Weebly
Wired.com
Wix Customer Sites
Yammer
Yelp
Zendesk.com
Zoho CRM
Credit Karma
Eventbrite
Netflix
NHL.com
Fox News
Disqus
Shopify
Soundcloud
Atom.io
Ancersty.com
ConstantContact
Indeed.com
New York Times
Weather.com
WSJ.com
time.com
xbox.com
dailynews.com
Wikia
donorschoose.org
Wufoo.com
Genonebiology.com
BBC
Elder Scrolls Online
Eve Online
PagerDuty
Kayak
youneedabudget.com
Speed Test
Freshbooks
Braintree
Blue Host
Qualtrics
SBNation
Salsify.com
Zillow.com
nimbleschedule.com
Vox.com
Livestream.com
IndieGoGo
Fortune
CNBC.com
FT.com
Survey Monkey
Paragon Game
Runescape
Here’s an internet outage map from DownDetector as of 12:46 PM EST:
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Here’s a gif that shows the internet outage at 9:00 AM EST versus 12:30 PM EST:
Your browser does not support HTML5 video tag.Click here to view original GIF
At the time of publication Dyn said that it was still dealing with the problem.
What websites are down for you? Send a tip to [email protected].
Update 9:05 AM EST: Judging by emails from readers, this problem seems to be getting worse.
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Update 9:43 AM EST: Dyn says the issue has been resolved.
Update 12:19 PM EST: Dyn says the issue is resolved, but multiple readers are messaging me to say they’re still having trouble accessing websites.
Update 12:25pm EST: It’s happening again. (see above) |
Thanks to the delayed employer mandate in ObamaCare, we are now sixteen months away from enforcement of those statutes, even though they go into effect in four months. Are employers taking a break from ObamaCare prep? Not hardly. Today we have three new stories about how the perverse incentives of the ACA will impact workers, starting with UPS, which has just announced that it will stop offering health-care coverage to spouses — and explicitly cites ObamaCare as the reason (via Jim Geraghty and Jeryl Bier):
United Parcel Service Inc. plans to remove thousands of spouses from its medical plan because they are eligible for coverage elsewhere. The Atlanta-based logistics company points to the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, as a big reason for the decision, reports Kaiser Health News. The decision comes as many analysts are downplaying the Affordable Care Act’s effect on companies such as UPS, noting that the move reflects a long-term trend of shrinking corporate medical benefits, Kaiser Health News reports. But UPS repeatedly cites Obamacare to explain the decision, adding fuel to the debate over whether it erodes traditional employer coverage, Kaiser says. Rising medical costs, “combined with the costs associated with the Affordable Care Act, have made it increasingly difficult to continue providing the same level of health care benefits to our employees at an affordable cost,” UPS said in a memo to employees.
As I pointed out a couple of weeks ago, the law requires employers to subsidize health-insurance costs for employees, but not for dependent children (meaning the employee has to pay full price), and they don’t have to cover spouses at all — even if the spouses don’t have their own jobs. Under that scenario, employees with children and stay-at-home spouses are better off going into the exchanges and getting taxpayer-fueled subsidies to buy their own family insurance — even though a mass migration into those exchanges will create an avalanche of unforeseen cost to ObamaCare. And sure enough, some workers have figured it out:
Just imagine saying this to your boss: “Don’t offer me health insurance benefits.” Those apparently bizarre words might actually end up being uttered next year because of a quirk in Obamacare that could financially penalize a number of workers and their families. That quirk means that for some people, it will be more economical to have an employer not offer health insurance subsidies for them and their families—and for the entire family to then instead be able to buy insurance with government subsidies on the Obamacare state health exchanges. “For a lot of people, that may be a better deal,” said Jonathan Wu, co-founder of the price-comparison site ValuePenguin.com. “We’re talking like thousands of dollars.”
Wu refers to this as “weird”:
What Wu calls one of several “weird” unintended effects of the Affordable Care Act—effects that lead to some less-than-affordable outcomes—stems from a rule that was adopted by the Health and Human Services Department last winter and goes into effect in 2014. Under the ACA, popularly known as Obamacare, a worker whose employer offers company-subsidized health insurance that costs the worker less than or equal to 9.5 percent of household income is considered to be receiving “affordable coverage.” … But HHS has ruled that the affordability test will consider only the cost to workers of buying insurance from their company’s plan for themselves—not that of insuring their entire family.
The solution is to have the employer end health-care coverage so that workers then qualify for the exchanges. The business will have to pay a penalty, but that’s far below the cost of providing subsidized health insurance, so they win, too. The only losers in this scenario are taxpayers who have to fork over billions more than anticipated in exchange subsidies.
The proper term isn’t “weird.” It’s “perverse incentives,” and we’ve been warning about them since ObamaCare was first proposed.
Not all workers have this much control over their health-insurance offerings, though. Substitute teachers in Trenton, New Jersey won’t even get the opportunity to make that choice after the Hamilton school district limited their potential work schedules, specifically because of ObamaCare:
The Hamilton school district has told its substitute teachers they will be limited to working a maximum of four days a week in the coming school year because of the federal health reform law’s future requirement that full-time employees be provided with health insurance. A memo mailed to the substitutes in late June said that the restriction resulted from a provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will require employers to provide affordable health insurance for full-time employees and their dependents. Full-time is defined as an average of 30 or more hours per week. “This memorandum will serve as official notice that, as of the 2013-2014 school year, strict limits will be placed on the number of working hours of part-time/temporary employees,” read the letter signed by director of human resources Katherine Shilenok-Wright.
Hey, didn’t Obama say he would delay enforcement of that employer mandate? Hamilton doesn’t want to wait around to find out:
The provision of the federal law was originally scheduled to go into effect in January 2014, and last month the federal government delayed enforcement until 2015, but the memo says the limits on substitute teachers’ hours will go into effect when school starts next month.
Once government sets the conditions for perverse incentives in the marketplace, it doesn’t take long for businesses and consumers to adjust to them. |
Imagine for a minute that you're football manager. This shouldn't be too hard, most of us do it several times a day. And imagine you're not just any football manager; you're the manager of one of the biggest clubs in the world, the current defending Champions of England, even. This is your moment!
Now imagine you've reconvened for the new season after an extended summer break and you see some of your players have returned surprisingly out of shape, many even lacking a bit of motivation, thinking that they can rest on their laurels from last season. And so you jet off to America for an intense training camp and in the very first friendly, you lose to the B (or was it C?)-team of the New York Red Bulls by conceding four goals in the second half. Like most fans, perhaps you think this is not a huge deal. For most of those kids, this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. For most of your kids, this was just something mundane to get done and move on to the next one. No big deal.
But then things don't really improve. And at some indeterminate point in the near future, you happen to lose your cool with your collection of so-called champions and, amongst other things I'm sure, you call them out on not even being able to beat a "Mickey Mouse team" like the reserves/youth of some MLS side.
Now imagine if some in your squad react to this negatively, as if you've done them some grave injustice. Imagine, players to whom later you would refer to as "no primadonnas", players who call themselves Champions of England getting offended that their title-winning manager calls them out for playing so badly that they couldn't even beat a bunch of kids still going through puberty. Imagine that this suddenly sours the relationship so badly between some players and the manager, that it sets the team up for failure from day 1.
Now, if you can imagine all that as a realistic scenario, even though it basically flies straight in the face of everything Mourinho and the players have been saying publicly, then you might enjoy Matt Hughes' latest effort in The Times. He peddles this exact story therein, apparently with the utmost seriousness, as the cause of all that's gone wrong at Chelsea.
The Times has been told that his relationship with some of his squad has been strained since pre-season [...] a resentment that has its roots in the manager's reaction to his side's first pre-season friendly of last summer, a surprise 4-2 defeat by the New York Red Bulls. In the immediate aftermath of that match in New Jersey, in July, Mourinho initially ignored his team after watching them concede four second-half goals to a side comprised largely of Red Bulls Academy youngsters, but brought the game up during a team talk several weeks later, in which he turned on his players and accused them of losing to a "Mickey Mouse team". This outburst infuriated several players, as they had moved on from that defeat and did not appreciate being castigated for it long after the event. -source: The Times
Oh, the poor babies just didn't appreciate it. The poor, poor babies. Here's a lollipop to make it all better. Don't worry, daddy still loves ya.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. You can read the rest here. Don't say I didn't warn you. I realize these sorts of CRISIS stories are a dime a dozen and have been regular think-pieces in the media for some time now. But at least Neil Ashton tends to add some daytime soap opera drama to his. This one's just hilariously serious — it even goes on to say that the recent positive words are nothing but "damning with faint praise" — for something so inconceivably minor and, really, commonplace.
I mean, in my day, we just called this coaching and being a manager, no? |
A message from Caroline Lucas
I have a favour to ask you, because I need your help.
Sadly I’ve been left with no new Green colleagues in Parliament after the last election and the Green Party's overall vote went down – in part because of my Party's decision to stand aside in some marginal constituencies.
Not many people know it, but a lower vote share also means less funding for the Green Party. Despite winning far more votes than the DUP we still only have one MP, and significantly less money.
That’s where you come in.
This year I have some big plans:
I want to hold the Government to account over arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
I want to visit Yarlswood detention centre, and expose the injustice there.
I want to scrutinise every single major Government policy on the environment.
I want to force Britain to the table on talks to ban nuclear weapons – and I want to build an alliance to stop Trident replacement.
I want to be the sharpest thorn in the Government’s side, and ultimately I want to be part of a movement that replaces these tired Tories with a progressive alternative.
But I can’t do any of this without support from my amazing team.
They work behind the scenes to skewer Ministers with Parliamentary Questions. They scour Government files looking for wrongdoing. They keep an eye on the frackers, the tax dodgers and the arms companies.
Despite the Green Party receiving half a million votes, I’m still the only MP, so having a team of dedicated staff really matters.
And that’s why I need your support. To keep speaking truth to power I need a bit of help funding my team. If you can give just £5 that would be immensely helpful, and if you can share this post with some friends that would be even better.
You might not be a Green Party member. You might have voted and campaigned for someone else. But I hope that you might still be willing to donate a small amount to help me fighting for social justice – and defending our environment.
I’ll always work with fellow travellers to further our shared goals, and I’ll always do my best to be your voice in a Parliament all too often dominated by vested interests.
Please do give what you can, and thank you!
Why We Need Your Help
In the 2017 General Election more people than ever before voted tactically. Significant numbers of Green supporters made a one off decision not to vote with their hearts but instead to vote tactically.
That means Caroline’s financial support has dropped by 50% too – the equivalent of 3.5 members of staff – because the funding that opposition parties get is calculated according to how many votes they get nationally.
Caroline relies on her staff to help her stand up for what matters.
And with Brexit negotiations, Gove as Environment Secretary and Trump turning his back on the Paris Climate agreement, we need Caroline doing what she does best.
The Impact
The Conservative Government – in cahoots with the DUP - has plans for legislation that will give free rein to fracking companies, weaken protections for asylum seekers and refugees, attack civil liberties, and give a massive boost to the UK arms trade and the trade we do with dictators.
Caroline will consistently expose what’s going on, call out Ministers and campaign for a future we can all be proud of. She punches way above her weight but with a much smaller staff team her impact will be hugely reduced.
Caroline’s budget has been reduced by £8k a month. If just half of everyone who voted Green in 2015 or 2017 gave £1 we’d easily raise enough to keep the staff team going for 5 more years.
Other ways you can help
If you are unable to contribute financially, you can still help by asking your friends to chip in or sharing this page on social media. |
It was some days back when Nokia unveiled their first Android phone, the Nokia X at the MWC 2014, but the phone appeared to have a different taste of Android. Like the other Android devices, the Nokia X doesn’t use the Android distribution backed by the licensed modules from Google such as Google Play, Gmail etc., but instead used their own Microsoft cloud service. But we thought that if we flash a custom ROM onto it, root, then we can give the taste of the Android which we usually see in Android phones.
However, it seems to be possible now as Nokia X developer units has rooted the Nokia X, and this means after this root developer can now add other apps to the system which includes the Google’s own closed source apps. The developer unit used the Framaroot app to root the Nokia X, which will allow to add other apps to the system.
With this ability in Nokia X, this phone will a best option while purchasing a mid-ranged smartphone. So, if you are interested in purchasing the Nokia X in future, then please take a note of the Framaroot app. What do you think about Nokia X after the root? Stay tuned for more updates.
SOURCE: androidcentral |
The Justice Department filed charges Monday against the wife of a dead ISIS commander, alleging that she was part of a conspiracy that resulted in the death of Kayla Mueller, a 26-year-old American aid worker who was kidnapped by ISIS in Syria.
But the ISIS widow, known as Umm Sayyaf, is unlikely ever to see the inside of a U.S. courtroom as she is already in custody in Iraq. A U.S. official told The Daily Beast that the charges against her were more of an “insurance policy” in case Iraqi officials fail to charge her or she is ever transferred to another country or she escapes prison.
The charges also didn’t answer lingering questions about how Mueller died. The so-called Islamic State widely known as ISIS has said she was killed during a Jordanian air strike in February 2015 that meant to avenge the immolating of a Jordanian pilot held by ISIS. U.S. officials have refuted that claim but haven’t offered any alternative explanation of how Mueller died.
The charges allege that Umm Sayyaf, whose real name is Nasrin As’ad Ibrahim, knew that Mueller was being held against her will as a sex slave, along with two young Kurdish women in the home of Umm Sayyaf and her husband, known as Abu Sayyaf, who was a top ISIS official involved in its illicit oil trade.
Umm Sayyaf is in the custody of the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq. She was captured by U.S. forces in Syria during a raid on an ISIS compound in May 2015. Her husband was killed, and she was taken into American custody and interrogated in Iraq by an American unit that operates outside the traditional criminal justice system.
But Umm Sayyaf is an Iraqi citizen, and ultimately the Obama administration deferred to Iraqi law, handing her over to authorities there. Officials told The Daily Beast at the time that they expected the Kurds to “throw the book” at her and that justice would be swift. But nine months later, there have been no reports of charges filed against Umm Sayyaf.
It was unclear if the Obama administration’s confidence in the Iraqi justice system had waned.
A Justice Department spokesman said the U.S. is still “fully committed to the Iraqis putting her through their justice system. No cards were taken off the table when she was transferred to Iraqi custody, and we have consistently said the U.S. justice system is a powerful tool to use against those who harm or kill our citizens,” Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi told The Daily Beast.
The idea that the U.S. always maintained the option of prosecuting Umm Sayyaf is something of a turnabout from previous statements.
The U.S. and Iraq do not have an extradition treaty. At the time Umm Sayyaf was captured, a U.S. official told The Daily Beast, “We discussed the idea of her surrender and extradition to the U.S. with senior-level [government of Iraq] officials, but ultimately that option was not available as Iraq has a constitutional prohibition on surrendering Iraqi citizens to foreign authorities.”
Because of that, Monday’s charges were meant, at least in part, as a way of ensuring that if Umm Sayyaf were freed, transferred to another country, or if she escaped, then U.S. law enforcement would be authorized to apprehend her on the conspiracy charges. The charges against her could carry a sentence of life in prison.
In an affidavit, the Justice Department also alleged that Mueller had been raped by the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, while she was being held in the home of Umm Sayyaf and her husband. Mueller was at various times handcuffed or held in locked rooms and she was “sexually abused by Baghdadi, who forced her to have sex with him,” according to a department statement.
Mueller’s family had previously said that officials had told them Mueller was sexually abused while in ISIS custody.
Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of when Mueller’s family and U.S. officials learned of her death through a video sent to the family by her captors.
A Mueller family spokesperson told The Daily Beast that officials had told them they were filing charges against Umm Sayyaf before the charges were publicly announced. |
Click HERE to download full report --- Then, Amnesty says, "In December, Parliament passed amendments to juvenile justice laws which allowed children aged 16 to 18 to be treated as adults in cases of serious crimes, in violation of India’s international legal obligations."
In its just-released annual report, Amnesty International has sharply criticized the Government of India for arbitrarily arresting and detaining “human rights defenders, journalists and protesters”, pointing out how authorities have been using the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act (FCRA) to restrict organizations from receiving foreign funding and harass NGOs and activists. Giving examples, Amnesty, which is one of the world's most influential human rights organizations, notes “a series of actions against Greenpeace India, including preventing one of its campaigners from travelling to the UK in January, ordering the organization’s bank accounts to be frozen in April and cancelling its FCRA registration in September.”Not just this, Amnesty, in its report for the year 2015-16, says, “The Ministry of Home Affairs cancelled the FCRA registration of thousands of NGOs for violating provisions of the law. In April, the Ministry ordered that it would have to approve foreign funds from certain identified donor organizations.”Amnesy notes, “In July, the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case against human rights activists Teesta Setalvad and Javed Anand for allegedly violating provisions of the FCRA. In September, authorities suspended the registration of an NGO run by the activists to receive foreign funding.”Especially referring to sedition laws being used by Indian authorities, Amnesty notes, “Laws which did not meet international standards on freedom of expression were used to persecute human rights defenders and others.”It points out how, in August, the Maharashtra state government went to far as to “issue a circular on how India’s sedition law must be applied, suggesting that criticism of a government representative would amount to sedition.”Pointing towards other laws being imposed similarly in India, Amnesty says, “Authorities also continued to use ‘anti-terror” laws such as the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and other state- specific laws which do not meet international human rights standards.”“In April”, it states, “The state government of Gujarat passed an anti-terror bill containing several provisions which violated international standards. Similar laws remained in force in Maharashtra and Karnataka states.”Even as such laws are being used, Amnesty says, “A Central Bureau of Investigation Court discharged several police officials suspected of involvement in an extrajudicial execution in Gujarat in 2005.”This, it says, happened despite the fact that in June, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial executions “noted in a follow-up report on India that guidelines by courts and the National Human Rights Commission often ‘remained on paper with little or no implementation on the ground’.”Referring to the continued use of Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, Amnesty says, "Impunity for violations by security forces in India persisted, and legislation granting virtual immunity from prosecution for the armed forces remained in force in Jammu and Kashmir and parts of northeastern India." |
In the age of the internet, it might be hard for some to dispute tales that actual living people are telling to reporters and outlets, especially if they are heartfelt. The story of this comedian Dan Nainan, though? Judging by the number of news organizations that have gotten quotes and stories from him in the last 16 years, to the point where he's been noted multiple times of being a 35-year-old millennial? It's amazing that he's still being hit up by outlets these days.
The Daily Beast recently posted a deep dive into his life, and it's astonishing that dude has gotten away with so many lies. Forbes recently did a story on Nainan and him being a millionaire millennial comedian back in December, and he was quoted in a number of articles, all calling him 35. Sounds all well and good... but when the Beast did some digging, they found out that dude isn't 35 at all; he's 55. For real; dude apparently caught a charge for fighting a former Daily Beast in 2013, and the police report from that time frame said his age range was around 52.
What's worse? Googling his name isn't hard, and would easily pull up how he's in fact "well over 50 years old." There's an entire website for it. The Daily Beast went in and actually got dude on the phone; for some reason he's still copping pleas, saying that he's definitely 35 and there was some kind of mistake on his birth record.
POST CONTINUES BELOW
Why is dude lying about his age? Who knows; some people just feel like they need to continuously lie about their age. He doesn't even look like he's in his thirties, though. Like, at all. And truth be told, even if he HAS been lying, what's good with the lack of fact-checking his age throughout the news media when it comes to this guy? Is he that convincing, or do people just not give that much of a fuck?
Either way, it's 2017: let's fix up and get these goddamn ages right. |
Mr Erdogan said the sight of American flags in the convoy alongside YPG insignia had "seriously saddened" Turkey.
The YPG is the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), who have waged an insurgency since 1984 inside Turkey that has left tens of thousands dead.
Mr Erdogan said he would bring up the issue with President Donald Trump during his planned visit to Washington on May 16 -- and called for the coordination between the US and YPG to "come to an end."
The US-YPG cooperation began under the Obama administration, and while Mr Trump said he would rethink the relationship when he took office, little has changed.
"This needs to be stopped right now," said Mr Erdogan. "Otherwise it will continue to be a bother in the region and for us."
"It will also bother us as two Nato countries and strategic partners," he said.
Turkey sent its troops into Syria in August 2016 in support of rebel fighters and as part of an offensive aimed at clearing out Isil and creating a buffer zone between itself and the Kurds.
The International Crisis Group (ICG) said in its latest report on the Syria crisis that the US had "a singular dilemma" on the future of its relationship with the YPG.
It said the YPG "is indispensable" to defeat Isil but there is also "no avoiding the fact" that the US is backing a force "led by PKK-trained cadres in Syria while the PKK itself continues an insurgency against a Nato ally." |
Two yeshiva students were stabbed Monday night in Jerusalem’s Old City.
According to reports, the stabbings occurred during a fight between the students and local Arab youths.
A 45-year-old man was stabbed in his abdomen, and was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Hospital in moderate condition.
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The other victim, 32 years of age, suffered from a shallow knife wound in the neck and had his arm broken. He was also in Shaare Zedek, where doctors said he was lightly injured.
The students, from the Shuvu Banim yeshiva, claimed they were set upon by a group of Arab youths as they left their study hall.
They reached the Kishle police station in the Armenian Quarter, and were taken to the hospital from there.
Police have made three arrests.
Security forces were searching the area.
Tensions in Jerusalem have been spiking in recent months, mostly over Palestinian claims that the Israeli government wants to change the status quo at the Temple Mount by allowing Jews to pray there.
Netanyahu has repeatedly denied the claims but some members of his right-wing coalition favor letting the prayers go forward.
In recent months, 11 people have been killed in attacks by Palestinian terrorists — mostly in Jerusalem.
Police on Monday were looking into reports of an attack by three young Israelis on a Palestinian youth in Jerusalem, and an assault by Arab youths on a Jewish Egged bus driver in Megiddo. |
On July 26, I announced my decision to join the Catholic Church. Hours earlier, a pair of jihadists had attacked a church in France and murdered a priest, Fr Jacques Hamel, while he was celebrating Mass.
Two months before that, I had begun studying one-on-one with a priest in London, reading Catholic books and immersing myself in the catechumen’s life. But I had no intention of going public with my conversion, not until after being received into the Church.
When news of the killing first broke, I knew next to nothing about Fr Hamel. Photos online showed an octogenarian priest with wispy white hair and a look of quiet, ordinary holiness.
This priest, this man, had been forced to kneel and had his throat slit in the name of ISIS – an evil act that demanded a response. So like any good millennial, I took to my Twitter account and wrote: “#IAmJacques Hamel. In fact, this is the right moment to announce I’m converting to Roman Catholicism.” It was an impulsive thing to do, not exactly in keeping with our Lord’s teaching to be as wise as serpents.
Over the next 48 hours, thousands of people re-tweeted me, and hundreds contacted me through social media. Then my announcement made its way to Christian media. Well-meaning journalists read my Wikipedia entry, noted that I’d been born and raised in Iran, and concluded: Fr Hamel’s final act had been to convert a Muslim.
Thousands more shared these news stories on Twitter and Facebook, usually accompanied by the famous saying of Tertullian that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church”. I wished my road to Rome had been as easy as “Moslem Writer Moved by Priest’s Martyrdom to Convert to Catholicism” (an actual headline from a Catholic outlet). The real story was much longer and more complicated.
When I was 12, I decided that there was no God. I remember the circumstances only vaguely. The year must have been 1997. I was on holiday with my parents in northern Iran, by the Caspian Sea. Many middle-class Iranians from the capital, Tehran, own modest cottages on the Caspian shore. My parents didn’t, but they had friends who did, and the summertime “villa trip” was a tradition.
I trace some of my happiest memories to these trips. There were usually other children – a delight for me, an only child. The days were invariably spent on the beach. Sharia law demanded strict separation of the sexes at sea. At most public beaches, the regime curtained off the water to create separate men’s and women’s areas. Everywhere there were banners and posters that read: “My sister, mind your veil. My brother, mind your eyes.”
But my parents and their friends usually found hidden corners where men and women could share the beach, away from the watchful eyes of the Islamic Republic’s morality committees. They would even bring bottles of araq, Iran’s searing home made spirit, in defiance of official prohibition. If the morality police showed up in their signature Toyota 4x4s, all wasn’t lost. Most of the officers could be bribed to overlook such iniquities.
The adults in the party would receive a stern scolding. They would make excuses, apologise and vow never to do it again.
Then the officers would say: “Well, if you’re having a good time, give us a taste of your candy.” This was the signal for the men to reach for their wallets, pool their cash and pay off the provincials. (There was always a non-zero chance, however, that the officer in charge was a true believer. Then a flogging could be in order.)
One night during that summer of 1997, in the borderland between childhood and pubescence, I began thinking seriously for the first time about all this. We’d returned to the villa from the beach. The air inside was dank with humidity. Evenings were reserved for cards and a barbecue, but I didn’t feel like sitting at the adult card table or horseplaying with the other kids. Maybe I’d had some dispute with the adults, though I can’t recall the substance.
I do remember retreating to my bunk bed upstairs and cursing everything. Religion, I concluded right then and there, was little more than a ritual of public hypocrisy – one that I’d be expected to perform. In our roshan-fekr (urbane, intellectual) milieu, piety was a sign of backwardness. But we feigned piety in public to keep our heads in the Islamic Republic. The trick was to take care that one’s double lives didn’t intersect.
Well, not if I could help it. At school, I had already begun clashing with my Koran teacher, whose real job was to inculcate students in the regime’s ideology, a mix of Shia chauvinism, anti-Americanism and Jew-hatred. When we returned from holiday, I escalated the war at school. Had I been a bit older it would have landed me in jail. But I was emboldened by the knowledge that soon my mother and I would be granted US green cards and immigrate to America.
At home, I air-drummed to Pink Floyd and read my father’s weather-beaten copy of Catcher in the Rye. My parents had divorced in 1991, but for my sake they’d kept up a charade of being married and living under the same roof. Now the marital theatre was over. The Floyd tapes, the Persian-language Salinger novel and a Japanese Noh mask were my father’s last gifts to me before my mother and I left Iran. I haven’t seen him since.
Eden, Utah (population 600) is a ski resort nestled in the Rockies, a couple of hours’ drive north of Salt Lake City. Eden was where my mother and I first arrived after emigrating from Iran. My uncle, my mother’s brother, had settled there not long after Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, and so the Beehive State became our home when we followed him two decades later. We were now in the heart of Mormon country.
Utah was a place of astonishing natural beauty, with a deeply religious and conservative culture. Alcohol in beer was capped at three per cent by law. Coffee was considered sinful. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints maintained seminaries right next to most public schools. It taught that ancient Israelites had come to America, attempted to convert the natives and recounted their trials and New World revelations in golden tablets that form a sort of sequel to the Bible.
Mormonism came as a shock, and the shame of becoming déclassé compounded it. We weren’t wealthy in Tehran, but we lived respectably, in a vast two-storey house my grandfather had built.
In Utah, we initially lived in a tiny mobile home in a college town called Logan after moving out of my uncle’s. When I hitched rides with school friends, I’d ask them to drop me off a few blocks away so they wouldn’t find out where I lived.
Then there was the sheer awkwardness of being fresh off the boat. Thanks to private tutoring and years spent watching American movies in the Islamic Republic, I was nearly fluent in English before ever setting foot in the US. But mastering American mores was tougher. Being secular-minded in Iran was one thing; the free and close proximity to girls in school something else.
Well, all this was fuel for the revolution I’d first launched in the old country. If Shia Islam, with its rich iconography and theology, was all hypocrisy, then Mormonism and America’s Protestant ethic and cheerful consumerism were even more contemptible – and equally repressive in their own way. I’ve moved from one theocracy to another, I used to joke. It was an obscene comparison, but it helped me make sense of my circumstances.
I began dressing in black every day, contrived a gloomy persona and – this last probably saved me – read voraciously. Just before university, I discovered Friedrich Nietzsche’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra in a Salt Lake City bookstore. It set me off on an intellectual and spiritual road that, many years later, would bring me to an unlikely destination: the Roman Catholic Church.
Reading important books on your own in your late teens is an intoxicating business. Your critical faculties are still only half-formed. So you read each author thinking, “He’s so right!” and “Isn’t it just so!” – without pausing to note the differences among the various authors, let alone your own doubts and objections.
That was the case with me, anyway. If I could go back, I would try to read the great books in some coherent order, closely and critically, preferably with a good teacher. I didn’t lack for opportunities to do that. But I was too arrogant to allow anyone to tell me how and what to read.
I began with the half-mad Nietzsche. He proclaimed that God is dead and that Judeo-Christian morality is the product of a slave mentality, allowing the weak to vent their ressentiment at the strong. Well, wasn’t it just so with these obedient Mormons, these American bumpkins? Zarathustra spoke to my soul. I missed most of Nietzsche’s biblical allusions, but it didn’t matter. The point was to surpass God, and good and evil, to arrive at a new morality (whatever that meant).
Nietzsche opened up the whole constellation of existentialist philosophy (mainly Sartre and Camus) and the existential-ish novel (Bataille, Dostoevsky, Hesse and Kafka). I majored in philosophy as an undergraduate, and I would get decent marks with essays arguing, for example, that “the very possibility of a metaphysics is foreclosed after Auschwitz and Hiroshima”, or that “we are condemned to responsibility in a world divested of meaning” (or some such).
My confidence was born of the fact that I had almost no real sense of the things I was writing about – of the gravity of real life. I lived totally in my head. There, the world was meaningless; and if there was any point to life, it could only be reached on the far side of God’s absence.
Camus and Sartre, my existentialist heroes, disagreed over what to do in this meaningless world. Camus favoured a kind of personal and situational ethics over grand political projects. Man’s tragic destiny, the fragility and absurdity of his life, lent him a certain dignity, and the point for Camus was to uphold that dignity. Sartre, the communist, thought it was class struggle that opened the way to man’s true ground of freedom and commitment. I went the Sartre route.
The next stop was Marxism – specifically Trotskyism, a more romantic strand of the totalitarian ideology. In retrospect, it’s obvious why Marxism appealed to me: it went well with the latent anti-Americanism still imprinted on my Iranian mind. With Marxism, I could oppose the US as the evil capitalist hegemon without having to buy into any fanatical Shia mumbo-jumbo. It also assuaged my own class anxieties. My economic displacement, you see, was but a small ripple in the dialectic.
I signed up to a Trotskyite group called Socialist Alternative. In my free time, I hawked its pamphlets and joined labour union picket lines (rest assured, I did my share of hooking up, hard drinking and drugs, too). I wept after finishing The Prophet, Isaac Deutscher’s three-volume hagiography of Trotsky. I wept for a Soviet leader, and became insufferably self-righteous.
But Marxism never was able to answer questions having to do with my inner life. It didn’t banish my personal demons, or give a satisfying account of what I now would call fallenness – my own and others’. Nor, for that matter, did Lacanian psychoanalysis, the Frankfurt School, post-structuralism, queer theory or any of the other fashionable philosophies I tried on, each in turn.
Glancing at life’s rear-view mirror, there is always a temptation to impose more cohesion on one’s thoughts than they possessed at the time. I’m no doubt doing that now. But if I were to boil down my worldview as a young man, before I came to the faith, to a single idea, it would be this: man’s place in the world is unsettled; we are homeless.
Capitalism’s pitiless destruction of older social forms, Darwin’s discovery of evolution, Freud’s conquest of the unconscious, the political horrors of the 20th century – all these things had made it impossible to cling to any eternal or permanent truth about humanity. The ancient prophets and philosophers had deluded themselves. Everything about people was a product of historical conditions and social power dynamics. And therefore people were infinitely malleable.
There were only two problems. First, these ideas didn’t withstand the scrutiny of real life. After university, I was accepted into a programme called Teach for America – the British equivalent is Teach First – which dispatches recent graduates to classrooms in the inner cities and underserved rural areas. My assignment took me to the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas, on the US-Mexico border. Nine out of 10 students at my school received subsidised lunches from the government, and the region was (and is) caught in the crossfire of America’s war on drugs.
As a committed leftist, I had to believe that the achievement gap between rich and poor students was purely a problem of redistributive justice. If only schools in the Valley were as richly funded as those in white, suburban districts, there would be no achievement gap.
My teaching career quickly disabused me of these notions. Even in the direst classrooms, great teachers – I wasn’t one, by the way – could make tremendous gains with students by setting high expectations and emphasising hard work, honesty and tough discipline.
That may not sound like an earth-shattering realisation to you, but it was for me. It didn’t lead me directly to Almighty God, but it suggested that there were gradations of character in all human circumstances. That there was great wisdom in old moralistic notions I used to sneer at. And, maybe, that there were permanent things about what makes all people tick. To judge the moral gradations implied some universal standard. And more often than not, that standard arose, not from anything external, but from a voice inside (a whisper in my case).
Well, as CS Lewis would ask: where did that whisper originate? And was it a coincidence that the other view – the one that said that morality is merely a function of power, history, biology, language and so on – gave me an alibi for shutting out the whisper when it became inconvenient?
If there were differences among individuals – if some ideas about right and wrong were better than others – the same held for nations. I’d spent enough time in the US and Iran to tell the difference. Ideologies that saw citizens as infinitely malleable to the whims of the state – modern political Islam is one of them – were capable of any monstrosity. Whereas societies that treated man as inherently dignified, while far from perfect, fostered genuine human flourishing. They were manifestly more pleasant to live in.
Well, where did the West get this curious notion that human beings have an inherent dignity that overrides the whims of Pharaoh? Recognising the Judeo-Christian foundations of the West didn’t make me a Christian, of course. But it helped. If I enjoyed the beauty and ordered liberty I saw around me, then I had to give credit to the ideals that gave birth to it. You couldn’t have one without the other. The beauty and order reflected an underlying truth. It wasn’t my truth, but I no longer lightly dismissed faith.
If pressed back then, I would say: “I don’t have the gift of faith, but I profoundly respect people of faith and their contributions, etc etc.” It was a sort of reverent boilerplate that I’d perfected for the occasion.
It wasn’t true. And this brings me to the second problem I ran into with my materialism. All along, going back to that 12-year-old profession of atheism, when I really wanted something or when I was in trouble, I’d recite the few Koranic verses I knew. Or, more often, I’d supplicate a non-denominational Almighty in the sky. Then, once the desired thing was obtained or trouble past, I’d feel a bit silly and return to my materialist certainties.
My hunger for God persisted, though, and I’d feel the pangs most acutely in moments of great shame. My life’s overall trajectory was upward, but it was marked by bursts of dangerous anger and self-destructive behaviour. Shame begat shame, and the cycle repeated itself, even as I went from material success to success. I needed something or someone to break the cycle.
Twice following bouts of heavy drinking in my early 20s I found myself instinctively, almost spontaneously, going to Catholic Mass. I really couldn’t tell you why, but I just sat in the back pews and felt waves of peace wash over me – without having any clue as to what was going on.
There was no definitive moment that led from those early experiences with the Mass to my knocking on a priest’s door and asking him to instruct me earlier this year. There were no visions or sudden epiphanies.
Somewhere along the way, I resolved to be honest with myself, if not others, about my need for Almighty God. One milestone was Benedict XVI’s visit to America in 2008. I was deeply impressed by his ministry and remember thinking to myself that this was a very holy man.
I picked up his book Jesus of Nazareth. It went over my head, mostly because my grasp of Scripture was still terribly spotty, and you can’t make sense of Jesus of Nazareth without knowing the Bible. I’d read the Passion story in one of the Gospels as an undergraduate and Robert Alter’s marvellous translation of the Pentateuch after college. That was it. The one thing that stayed with me from Benedict XVI’s book was the Pope’s profound meditation on the idea that Almighty God had become man and entered our history – which is to say, the central mystery of Christianity. Et incarnatus est.
Making some sense of the Incarnation “unlocked”, if you will, the civilisational glories of the West and imbued them with real meaning for me.
Take Caravaggio’s The Denial of St Peter, my favourite painting, a work that can bring me to tears. I could have told you all about Caravaggio’s tumultuous life, spoken at length about why the painting is considered a masterpiece, and recounted the basics about the events he was portraying. But then I came to understand why any of this mattered: that the Person whom St Peter is denying isn’t just his great friend and teacher, but the very God Himself, God from God, who has entered our fallen world. And whose greatest act is to endure humiliation, be spat upon, crucified and even denied by his friends.
The beauty of the painting became, for me, a sign of the underlying truth. The story of the three denials, in other words, was no longer just a moving narrative, but part of an event upon which all of cosmic history pivots. More than that: an event and an idea that shook me to my core.
Still, I continued aestheticising my spirituality. Among friends I’d sometimes inject Christian themes into the conversation only to quickly add: “You know, I don’t take this stuff to be true – but it is all very beautiful, isn’t it? It’s been a civilising force, no?”
St Peter had nothing on me in the denial department. Until one day I stopped denying.
You may still ask: why Catholicism? Well, I dabbled for a couple of years with Evangelical Christianity. Catholics don’t exactly send you text messages asking: “Would you and your wife like to join us for Sunday service?” Evangelicals do.
My mother was Born Again a few years ago, and as a journalist, I would occasionally write about persecuted Christians in Iran and the Arab world. One of my sources, a conservative Evangelical activist who campaigns for the persecuted Church, became a great source of encouragement in my Christian journey. In the end, though, I couldn’t do anything with Evangelical Christianity. I admired Evangelicals, but their theology didn’t satisfy. I couldn’t just blink and conclude “I’ve been saved.”
Life experience had led me to see the Christian idea of the Fall, and our Lord’s gift of radical repentance, as the most sensible solution to the brokenness all around me. That much was clear. But with Catholicism there was the added assurance that came with two millennia of continuous authority. The Church’s hierarchical character, which so repelled my Evangelical friends, was one of its attractions for me. It meant that, having seen off a thousand heresies, Rome would be less likely to permit the Christian idea to be distorted by the passing fads of the day. And those fads – from leftist politics to “mindfulness” to Indian banana treatments – looked like so many third-rate substitutes for Catholic sacramental life.
Then there was the liturgy. I longed for worship that gave full expression to the mysteries of the Christian faith. The Cross had to be there, but also our Lord’s crucified body – with the pierced side, and the bloodied hands, the scourged and welted back, and the thorns cutting into the forehead. The sacrifice had to be restaged, and His Mother had to be there, too, because she was our link to His divinity, to His becoming flesh. I longed for the Mass, in other words.
So I returned to the Mass. And eventually I knocked on that priest’s door and told him that I wanted to become a Catholic. “OK,” he said simply. “I shall instruct you.” Now, I can pray, more often than not without feeling a shred of hypocrisy, “Hail, Mary, full of grace …” And add with confidence: “Fr Hamel, pray for us.”
Sohrab Ahmari is an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal in London and the author of The New Philistines: How Identity Politics Disfigure the Arts.
This article first appeared in the September 30 2016 issue of The Catholic Herald. To read the magazine in full, from anywhere in the world, go here. |
Ukraine’s government has begun cutting off payments and banking services to areas of the country under the control of pro-Russian rebels, in a further sign that Kiev has given up trying to control the territory.
There has been a problem with ready cash in the region for months, but Kiev’s decision to sever banking services to the region mean even credit cards will no longer work.
Journalists reported seeing long queues of people outside banks in Donetsk attempting to withdraw their money. The majority of businesses said their credit-card machines were no longer working, after Ukraine’s central bank ordered all banks to cease operations in the east.
Ukraine’s government has also said it will stop funding social services such as schools and hospitals in areas it does not control.
Winter in the major city of Donetsk and other parts of the east under separatist control is likely to be harsh for those who have remained, as industry has ground to a halt, military confrontation continues and supplies of food and energy are unreliable.
The separatist authorities have a dilemma: they have declared independence from Ukraine, but unlike with the Crimea peninsula, Russia has shown little appetite for formally taking over the east. This leaves the rebel authorities unsure where to turn for the cash to dole out benefits, pensions and other payments.
“What this means in reality is the confiscation of the pensions and benefits of our veterans, pensioners, disabled people and mothers … It is an attempt to end civilised life in the Donbass region,” said the Donetsk People’s Republic in an official statement. “We think there are no legal reasons not to pay money from the budget to people based in the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics. People living on our territories have the same rights as other citizens of Ukraine.”
Previously, the Donetsk authorities have proclaimed their territory an independent state and said they no longer wanted anything to do with Kiev. Ukraine has been setting up makeshift border posts along the line of control, a further sign that Kiev has realised it cannot win back the territory militarily.
Representatives of Russia, Ukraine and the separatists signed a ceasefire agreement in Minsk in September, but sporadic fighting has continued and none of the sides have taken the agreements seriously.
Philip Breedlove, Nato’s top military commander, said on Wednesday that Russian forces were still operating in eastern Ukraine. Breedlove, on a visit to Kiev where he met Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, said the Russian army was “training, equipping, giving backbone” to separatist forces.
Russia has repeatedly denied any militarily involvement in east Ukraine, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Moscow has claimed any Russian soldiers in the east had either got lost or were on holiday. |
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"The team and I are thrilled to join Apple. There is tremendous alignment with our values, and we are excited to continue our growth in Auckland and contribute to the great innovation in wireless charging coming out of New Zealand."
Apple recently purchased PowerbyProxi , a company that designs wireless power solutions, reports New Zealand website Stuff . Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering Dan Riccio told Stuff that the PowerbyProxi team will be a "great addition as Apple works to create a wireless future.""We want to bring truly effortless charging to more places and more customers around the world," Riccio added.PowerbyProxi was founded in 2007 to develop wireless charging technology that lets people charge smartphones and other devices without requiring a cord. PowerbyProxi has developed the Proxi-Module , a modular wireless power system that can adapt and integrate into a wide variety of products and situations, delivering up to 100 watts of power to devices like drones and robots.The Proxi-Module, which features a modular, waterproof design that lets it adapt to a range of use cases, is said to offer the highest power density of any solution on the market with an end to end efficiency of 91 percent, offering "unprecedented performance" with reduced power and heat losses.PowerbyProxi has also been working on the development of the Wireless Power Consortium's future Qi wireless charging standard and has received accolades and funding for its work. Apple is also a member of the Wireless Power Consortium as of February 2017.In a statement, PowerbyProxi founder Fady Mishriki said his team is "thrilled" to be joining Apple.Apple in September unveiled the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus, and iPhone X, and all three new devices are equipped with Qi-based wireless charging capabilities that allow them to charge from Qi-certified wireless chargers.Apple is already developing its own wireless charging mat that can charge the iPhone, the Apple Watch, and the AirPods at the same time, and with the addition of PowerbyProxi, Apple could expand into a range of other charging accessories for both home and retail use.It's not clear how much Apple paid to purchase PowerbyProxi, nor did Dan Riccio elaborate on how the PowerbyProxi technology will be used by Apple in the future. |
Posted 26/09/2017 by Simon Speldewinde
30 August 2017 marked the completion of the first year of the 45th Parliament. In that time there has been continuing interest in the voting records of the Independent parliamentarians and minor parties in both Houses, particularly in the Senate where the Government requires eight out of the 19 crossbench votes (including the seven Australian Greens) to pass legislation. The Parliamentary Library has compiled some statistics on the voting records of the minor parties and Independent MPs in both Houses in that time.
The tables below cover every division in each House. A division may be called in a chamber to decide on any number of questions or motions—for example in relation to legislation, rearrangement of business, censure, or closure of debate. It is important to note that not all matters in either the House of Representatives or the Senate are resolved by a formal division, but can be resolved on the voices without the need for a formal vote. Under section 23 of the Australian Constitution the President of the Senate is entitled to vote in all divisions of the Senate, whereas under section 40 of the Constitution the Speaker of the House of Representatives only votes in the case of a tied vote of the House, and then has a casting vote. So far in the 45th Parliament the current Speaker, the Hon Tony Smith MP, has used his casting vote on two occasions.
For context, of the 254 divisions called in the House of Representatives during the first year of the 45th Parliament, only 34 have been on the second or third readings of legislation (not including amendments moved during the second reading debates or motions to suspend standing orders to debate a bill). In the Senate the equivalent number is 48 out of 372 divisions called over the period.
In the House of Representatives the Government has a majority, and almost always wins any division (most divisions in the House are decided on a majority of the votes actually cast for each division rather than according to a majority of all 150 Members). In the Senate, however, it is far more common for a government to be in the minority in a division as it does not usually hold a majority of seats. In the first year of the 45th Parliament the Government has been in the majority for 271 out of the 372 divisions in the Senate—with the support, often through negotiation, of the Opposition or the crossbench.
Note that each percentage is rounded to the nearest whole number.
Senate
Data for the Senate crossbench (currently 19 senators including the Australian Greens) is taken from Senate StatsNet, with calculations undertaken by the Parliamentary Library. Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party (PHON) has recorded a ‘split’ vote (at least one member from a party voting in opposition to another member of their party ) on 12 occasions; the only other party to record a split vote was the Coalition when two Coalition senators voted in favour of Senator Leyonhjelm’s disallowance motion on the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Amendment (Shotguns and Shotgun Magazines) Regulation 2016.
The Government and Opposition have voted together in 134 divisions.
Background on the crossbench senators can be found here, although there have been several changes to the composition of the Senate crossbench in the first year of the 45th Parliament. PHON Senator Peter Georgiou replaced fellow PHON Senator Rodney Culleton on 10 March 2017, following the High Court’s disqualification of the latter under section 44 of the Constitution. Senator Cory Bernardi left the Liberal Party on 7 February 2017 to sit first as an Independent, and then later as a Senator for the Australian Conservatives (AC). Senator Lucy Gichuhi was declared elected by the High Court of Australia on 19 April 2017, replacing former Senator Bob Day who resigned on 1 November 2016. The figures for each have been adjusted accordingly.
It should be noted that the Senate only records those senators who are present in the chamber during a division. The reasons for absences are not recorded and thus the numbers below do not discriminate between abstentions, leave or other possible explanations. Full day absences are recorded elsewhere in the Journals.
Figure 1: crossbench voting patterns in the Senate over the first year of the 45th Parliament (by percentage)
Key: NXT= Nick Xenophon Team; JLN= Jacqui Lambie Network; PHON= Pauline Hanson's One Nation; LDP= Liberal Democrats Party; DHJP= Derryn Hinch's Justice Party; AC= Australian Conservatives; GRN= Australian Greens.
House of Representatives
Data for the House of Representatives crossbench (currently five members) has been recorded and calculated by the Parliamentary Library. There have been three divisions where the Government and Opposition have voted together against Independent/minor party MPs. There have also been 11 divisions with fewer than four members on one side; in such cases the House does not proceed to a full vote count. These votes have not been included in the numbers below.
It should be noted that the House of Representatives only records those MPs who are present in the chamber during a division. The reasons for absences are not recorded and thus the numbers below do not discriminate between abstentions, leave or other possible explanations. Full day absences are recorded elsewhere in the Votes and Proceedings.
Figure 2: crossbench voting patterns in the House of Representatives over the first year of the 45th Parliament (by percentage) |
Las Vegas (CNN) -- Nathaniel Montague spent more than 50 of his 84 years chasing history, meticulously collecting rare and one-of-a-kind fragments of America's past. Slave documents. Photographs. Signatures. Recordings.
Montague -- Magnificent Montague, as he's been known since his days as a pioneering radio DJ -- amassed an 8,000-piece collection reflecting names from the well-known to the forgotten to those history never thought to remember. It's valued in the millions; some call it priceless. One assessment of just five of the pieces puts the total value of those treasures alone somewhere between $592,000 and $940,000.
"I shudder to even fantasize what it could go for," said appraiser Philip Merrill, who performed the assessment.
For decades Montague carted the collection of African-American artwork, artifacts and ephemera around the country with his family as he took jobs at radio stations in New York, Chicago, Oakland, and Los Angeles, and then finally to Las Vegas, where he moved 12 years ago after closing a station he built from the ground up in Palm Springs, California.
The Montague Collection was his prized possession, but because of financial woes he has lost it. It is now up for auction.
"I have not been able to maintain the collection for the last couple of years," Montague said. While working with his wife of 56 years, Rose Casalan, to archive and prepare the collection for sale, he took out a loan to help pay for the archiving, found himself overextended financially and declared bankruptcy. His collection was seized, and it is now in the hands of a trusteeship charged with selling it to satisfy his debts, including a judgment for $325,000 plus interest and court fees.
If no one steps up to buy the collection in its entirety, Montague's life's work could be dismantled and sold off in pieces to pay his creditors.
In the meantime, it is stored in a confidential location in Nevada.
Boxed and hidden under tight security in Las Vegas -- away from the city's bright lights and infamous Strip -- is the item that sparked his collection: a set of first-edition Paul Laurence Dunbar books Montague purchased in Washington in 1956.
"One day I stumbled into a book by Paul Laurence Dunbar," he said. Until that day, he had never thought of collecting memorabilia -- much less heard of Dunbar, author of novels, short stories and essays, and the first African-American to gain national acclaim as a poet.
"I bought the book, and I never looked back after that," Montague said.
It was the first time he saw the "Negro dialect" Dunbar was known for using in his early poetry, and it sparked his interest in African-American culture -- "the Negro problem," as it was called in periodicals in the 1950s.
"I began to learn who some of the blacks were in the 1800s and 1700s, and I was shocked. I said, 'Well, I have to do something about this.' So I started going to bookshops and visiting the dealers. And I would ask, 'Do you have anything black? Negro?'"
He looked for first editions and signed copies, no matter the cost. "I just had to have it," he said. "I had to bid my brains out."
He dug through magazine crates and traveled the country visiting rare book stores and auctions. He once traveled from Los Angeles to Germany to purchase "The African," an 1890 pastel drawing of an African king wearing traditional robes. It was drawn and signed by Austrian artist Rudolf von Mehoffer, who was known for his portraits of German and Austrian royalty.
"I would spend sometimes a day, hours, in a place going through old magazines, looking for something about the Negro. Something about the word 'colored.' Something about the word 'black,'" he said.
"I didn't collect; I chased," he said, making investments in time, money and energy that he says he cannot measure. "I was not writing history; I was chasing it."
For more than 50 years he memorized names of writers, artists and filmmakers, hunted them, found them, and added their works to his collection. There are pieces that inspire him, like the first edition of Phillis Wheatley's "Poems on Various Subjects," dated 1773 and signed by the author, who was born a slave and became the first African-American to have a published book.
There's a 1944 Fred Sapp oil painting of Toussaint L'Ouverture, leader of the rebellion that emancipated Haiti's slaves in 1801.
He also has pieces he considers historical yet repugnant, such as sheet music to the 1900 song "Coon, Coon, Coon" and a 1935 advertisement for "The World's Only Flying Negro Singers."
Also secured in the Las Vegas vault is a fundraising letter Booker T. Washington wrote seeking financial assistance for 221 students at Tuskegee, the college he founded in 1881. There are photographs, receipts and letters from the Lincoln Motion Picture Co., the nation's first all-black production company. Brothers George and Noble Johnson operated it from 1916 to 1923, producing five full-length films and other works they showed mainly in black churches and small assembly halls.
Montague acquired a copy of the Liberator, an anti-slavery newspaper published from 1831 to 1865, when the Civil War ended and the 13th Amendment was ratified, abolishing slavery.
There's the 1820 bill of sale for "Two Negro boys George + Paris," who were sold for a total of $1,230, and a contract with Negro Nancy, who with an "X" and a thumbprint agreed to a life of indentured servitude in Pennsylvania.
"I'd say I have 500 to 600 items that the public have never seen and will never see until they see the collection," Montague said, including memorabilia and recordings from his time as a DJ and radio station owner, where he recited poetry with soul music pioneer Sam Cooke, performed with R&B artist Wilson Pickett and coined the phrase, "Burn, Baby, Burn."
Montague says he came up with the phrase in 1962 while working at a station in New York. He was given a copy of Pickett's new song, "If You Need Me," and he fell in love with it.
It was a custom to say "buuurn" when music was moving.
"Something hit me, and I said, 'Burn, Baby, Burn,'" Montague said. Then he asked his listeners to call in and experience it with him.
"If you like the record, call me and say, 'Montague, Burn, Baby, Burn.'"
That night a catchphrase was born. Students would call in with their name and their school and say "Burn, Baby, Burn" to express their pleasure with the R&B and soul hits he was spinning. They'd howl and he'd drop the latest album by the Platters, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder -- "All the heavyweights, baby" -- and together they'd exclaim, "Buuurn."
Magnificent Montague took his show -- and his hot catchphrase -- from New York to Chicago, and from Chicago to Los Angeles, where he arrived three months before the August 1965 Watts riots.
By then, "Burn, Baby, Burn" had caught on in Los Angeles and quickly became the battle cry for those taking to the streets after a white highway patrolman arrested a black motorist on suspicion of drunken driving. It was a hot night in the Watts neighborhood, and the scene soon escalated into a confrontation between police and nearby residents. Tensions between the black community and police boiled over, and a week later 34 people were dead and more than 1,000 were injured. More than 600 buildings were damaged or destroyed.
"They wanted to be recognized," Montague said of the rioters. "And the only way they could be recognized with what was going on in Watts, what happened with this young man, what happened with no jobs, all of this grief, the easiest thing to use is what they knew how to use."
He stopped using the phrase after that, but he kept the recordings and added them to his collection.
Merrill, who assessed the collection, calls him a hero.
"You're not going to see another collection like this," said Merrill, who is an appraiser on PBS's "Antiques Roadshow" and a consultant for the Smithsonian National Museum of African-American History and Culture.
"Sometimes you find mass-produced pieces," like posters, brochures or pamphlets, Merrill said. "This is not that. It's all rare and one-of-a-kind.
"The collection was built on love," Merrill said. "He did this for future generations."
For 50 years Montague kept his pieces in public storage facilities, protected by nothing but a padlock. It was set up as his personal museum. Paintings and documents were framed and hung. Books and periodicals were meticulously organized. He kept a small desk and chair in the storage bin and spent time with the collection every day, reading and researching.
"No one knew where it was," Montague said. "It had no address. Nobody knew nothing. Not even the storage people knew what I had."
When it was time for him to move to a new city, he'd find a new home for his family and a new home for his collection. He'd drive behind the movers and keep an eye on it.
"When I first started collecting, I had no plan," Montague said. "I was drunk with the passion to collect. I had no plan to do anything with it but keep it. To hoard it for myself. Have it in my house. It was for me. I was doing it for Magnificent Montague."
Eventually he decided it was something that needed to be shared. He saw "museum libraries" on trips to Europe, places where artifacts could be viewed and touched but not checked out. He wanted to do the same with his collection.
"I'd like to see it where the people of America -- the young people mainly -- can have access to it, where it can be toured if possible," he said.
He didn't get a chance to finish his work. After the judgment against him was filed, he declared bankruptcy in August 2011, and the collection was seized in October.
"It's an emotional case," said Dotan Melech, the federal bankruptcy trustee assigned to administer the estate. "The conventional approach to bankruptcy is to take the few items that were worth anything, sell it and satisfy the debt, and give the debtor the rest of the items. That's the conventional approach to bankruptcy. That's what any bankruptcy trustee would've done."
However after meeting Montague, Melech said he caught his passion. "It's very contagious," he said.
"This is an opportunity to do something that can really benefit future generations and educate for many years to come, and I share the same desire and objective as the debtor has in this case," Melech said.
"I feel that this is an opportunity for the bankruptcy system to do the right thing."
He is looking for what he calls a win-win situation, where the debt can be satisfied and the collection can remain intact.
Merrill, a collector himself, is worried that won't happen.
"It's like a basketball game, and we're in the fourth quarter," he said.
The trusteeship has targeted universities, museums and collectors as potential buyers, but so far no one has moved forward. The next step may be selling it in pieces. Eventually the debt must be settled.
For now, the Montague Collection remains intact and out of sight. Montague misses it.
CNN recently was granted access to the collection on the condition that the location and other details of the storage facility would not be disclosed. Montague was able to visit it, as well. With the exception of a few items -- Phillis Wheatley's book, Negro Nancy's contract, and a pincushion crafted by Patrick Reason -- all he was able to touch were the boxes.
He was satisfied, even chuckling at how he nearly didn't purchase the pincushion from a shop in Florida.
"This lady, she has this little pincushion. I say, 'What do I want with a pincushion?' and she says, 'Oh, you want this one. This one I think is important,'" he recalled.
He bought it, and later while thumbing through his history books came across Reason, a freeborn black abolitionist who expressed his anti-slavery sentiments through art.
The pincushion -- engraved with an image and the words "Black Man Kneeling in Chains" -- was sold by white abolitionists as a fundraiser.
"It's in good hands," Montague said of the piece and his collection. He speaks of it as if the only potential outcome is what he longs for, that it will stay together.
"They are able to do for it ... and present it and get it sold," he said, rubbing the boxes.
He says he has no regrets, and he sounds hopeful.
"If tomorrow it was said to me, 'Take it back; take it back; take it back. Everything is all right, take it back,' I would turn it down," he said.
"I can't do it justice. I've done my thing, and I've done it from my heart and soul. Now it deserves better than me. The hurt is surpassed by where it is going to go, and what it is going to be."
Meanwhile, Melech continues to search for a buyer who will keep it intact so it won't have to be sold piecemeal.
"Once you do that you're going to break two things," he said. "You're going to break the collection, and you're going to break his heart."
Digital Content Producer Brandon Ancil produced the video and photos. |
Two Albertans were named Canada's newest astronauts Saturday as the country marked its 150th birthday.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the Canada Day celebrations in Ottawa to name Jennifer Sidey of Calgary and Joshua Kutryk of Fort Saskatchewan.
Sidey is a lecturer with the University of Cambridge who has worked as a mechanical engineer, while Kutryk is an air force pilot who also holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in defence studies.
.<a href="https://twitter.com/Astro_Kutryk">@Astro_Kutryk</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Astro_Jenni">@Astro_Jenni</a> will begin two years of training at <a href="https://twitter.com/NASA_Johnson">@NASA_Johnson</a> in August 2017. <a href="https://t.co/JzhsmlQCac">https://t.co/JzhsmlQCac</a> <a href="https://t.co/OTwcYd8RgX">pic.twitter.com/OTwcYd8RgX</a> —@csa_asc
Trudeau announced Sidey and Kutryk as the newest members of the Canadian Space Agency's astronaut team after Ontario-born singer Shania introduced budding astronauts Juliet Munn-Lenz of Grand Prairie, Alta. and Sahana Khatri of Vaudreuil, Que. Twain told the two youngsters and Canadians that you're never too young to start following your dreams.
Sidey and Kutryk were chosen from an initial pool of 3,772 applicants who met the minimum criteria set out by the CSA.
Sidey told the crowd in Ottawa on Saturday that she was inspired to become an astronaut in 1992 when Roberta Bondar went into space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. She said she had the opportunity to attend a speech in Calgary by Canada's first female astronaut.
Canadian country pop singer Shania Twain introduces two budding young astronauts, Juliet Munn-Lenz of Grand Prairie, Alta., right, and Sahana Khatri of Vaudreuil, Que., before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the two new members of the CSA. (CBC) "I remember looking up to her being excited at the idea of being a scientist, being a Canadian and having the opportunity to explore places beyond our world," she said.
"I'm grateful to have had that role model and that memory makes this moment so powerful for me."
Kutryk, for his part, said he is honoured to be joining the Canadian Space Agency.
Jenni Sidey and Joshua Kutryk will begin a two-year training program in Houston this August 5:41
"Throughout the recruitment campaign, Jenni and I met some amazing Canadians, scientists, doctors, engineers, pilots like myself. There is so much talent in this country," he said.
"I stand on the shoulders of the great Canadian astronauts before me, they inspired me to be the best that I could be."
Sidey and Kutryk will be reporting for training at Johnston Space Centre in Houston later this month.
The two-year training program the pair will undergo includes instruction on systems on the International Space Station, spacewalks and Russian language training. |
One of the worst questions a facilitator could ask is “How would you like to categorize these?” That’s why we hired you. Categorizing and creating clusters of related items (or processes) makes it easier for a group to stay focused in subsequent discussions. Learn the secret now when the challenge is how to categorize when facilitating.
Rationale for How to Categorize
The purpose of categorizing is to eliminate redundancies by collapsing related items into clusters or chunks (a scientific term). A label or term that captures the title for each cluster can be more easily re-used in matrices and other visual displays. Categorizing also makes it easier for the team to analyze complex groupings and their impact on each other.
Method for How to Categorize
Categorizing can take little or much time, depending on how much precision is required, time available, and importance. The first method shown is quick and effective. The other methods may also be effective, but probably not as quick.
Underscore Common Nouns
Take the raw input or lists created during the ideation step and underscore the common nouns (typically the object in a sentence that is preceded by a predicate or a verb). Use a different color marker for each group of nouns. Ask the team to offer up a term or label that captures the meaning of each cluster that is underscored.
(Optionally)
For each item, ask “Why _____?” Items that share a common purpose likely have a common objective and can be grouped together.
Transpose
Take the new terms or labels that signify a cluster or grouping and move them to a separate list or table. The terms may be defined and illustrated with the list of items that belongs to each cluster. Use the FAST Definition tool to build a consensual and robust definition.
Scrub
Go back to the original list and strike the items that now collapse into the new terms created for each cluster in the Transpose step above. Allow the group to contrast any remaining items that have not been eliminated and decide if they require unique terms, need further explanation, or can be deleted.
Comparison Review
Before transitioning, review the final list of clusters and confirm that team members understand the terms and that they can support the operational definitions. Let the team members know that they can add additional terms to the clusters later, but if they are comfortable with them as is, to move on and do something with the list, as it was built for input to a subsequent step or activity.
(In Conclusion, Other Grouping Themes)
Humans visually perceive items not in isolation, but as part of a larger whole. The most frequent cause of categories is common purpose (eg, gardening tools). However, the principles of perception include other human tendencies such as:
Similarity—by their analogous characteristics
Proximity—by their physical closeness to each other
Continuity—when there is an identifiable pattern
Closure—completing or filling-in missing features
Become Part of the Solution—Improve Your Facilitation and Methodology Skills
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▪ First of all, highly effective PPT Break Timers for $19.99
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Purchase the book “Change or Die, a Business Process Improvement Manual” for much of the support you might need to lead more effective groups, teams, and meetings.
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Finally, do not forget to order Change or Die if you’re working on a business process improvement project. It provides detailed workshop agendas and numerous tools to make your role easier and your team’s performance a lot more effective—daring you to embrace the will, wisdom, and activities that amplify a facilitative leader.
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Sen. Paolo Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV released Wednesday a list of websites and social media pages spreading false content, many of which he said “carry the name” of President Rodrigo Duterte.
Aquino told a Senate committee hearing on a bill seeking to penalize fake news that the 87 websites, 95 Facebook and 56 Youtube pages on his list were culled from the list released by the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines in January, “plus our own research."
Presidential Communications Undersecretary Joel Sy Egco denied Malacañang’s involvement in the fake news sites.
“It’s so easy to put up a website, name it after Bam Aquino or the president, and then pagka nabuking ka na (when you get caught), you take down the site, and you put up another,” he said.
But he agreed with Aquino that it was “troublesome” that many of the sites carry the president’s name. “People would think that these websites are actually allied to the president’s camp,” Egco said.
Several Palace officials, including Presidential Communications Secretary Martin Andanar and Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson, who was present in the hearing, have been accused of spreading wrong information.
“Blogger po ako, hindi po ako journalist (I’m a blogger, not a journalist),” Uson said, despite being a regular columnist for mainstream broadsheet The Philippine Star, and formerly hosting a radio show before getting suspended.
Uson added that unlike the mainstream media, she is not compelled as a blogger to seek balance in her posts. More, she said her opinions reflect her views as a private individual.
Sen. Nancy Binay, however, said that Uson is bound by the code of ethical standards for public officials.
“Baka it’s high time for you to decide kung gusto mo maging blogger o gusto mo maging Asec (It might be high time for you to decide if you want to be a blogger or an assistant secretary),” Binay told Uson.
Pro-Duterte blogger Rey Joseph Nieto, who puts out ThinkingPinoy and is now a consultant at the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), said some people prefer fake news to “real news” from the mainstream media “kasi po minsan yung real news sobrang sabog, sobrang unbelievable din at sobrang slanted (because the real news is too messy, too unbelievable, too slanted).”
Nieto also repeated an earlier accusation that photojournalist Jes Aznar posted a live video of military operations in Marawi City, purportedly endangering the lives of government snipers.
The National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP) in a statement called Nieto out for what it said was an attempt “to resurrect his utterly discredited accusation” against Aznar.
“That Nieto did all this under oath should have earned him a perjury charge or a contempt citation at the very least,” the NUJP said.
“That he did so as a consultant of the DFA, paid with the people’s money, makes it a hundred times worse,” it added.
Andanar, citing unverified information, accused Senate reporters in February of receiving bribes.
“Sometimes people, even officials, say unverified statements,” said Assistant Communications Secretary Ana Maria Paz Banaag during the hearing, when pressed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV to comment on Andanar’s gaffe.
Uson, who takes charge of the Palace communications social media office, faces a libel complaint filed by Sen. Antonio Trillanes, who accused her of maliciously depicting him as being corrupt by sharing on her Facebook page fake details of his supposed offshore accounts.
Libel, a crime under the Revised Penal Code, is already an available remedy for persons victimized by fake news, said Sen. Franklin Drilon during the hearing.
“Avail of the libel law,” Drilon said, adding that any form of constraint on free speech is a “slippery issue.”
Yet, Sen. Joel Villanueva, the proponent of Senate Bill No. 1492 or the anti-fake news act, which proposes stiffer punishments for public officials, said the measure if enacted would be different from libel.
“Ang pinaparusahan sa fake news ay ang malisyosong paggawa, paglalathala, pagpapakalat ng maling balita (What the anti-fake news law seeks to penalize are the malicious creation, publication, and spreading of fake news),” Villanueva said.
“Sa libel, kahit totoo ang impormasyon, kapag napatunayang walang mabuting motibo para ipakalat, maari po kayong kasuhan (In libel, even if the information were true, if no good motive is found, one could still be liable), he added.
The definition of “fake news” could be left to the courts, the senator said.
At present, the National Bureau of Investigation cannot act on cases of circulation of fake news, said Cybercrime Division Chief Manuel Antonio Eduarte.
“If the fake news will result in libel or other cases, it will be actionable by the office. Otherwise, we cannot act on it,” he said.
Journalist Ellen Tordesillas said the country’s libel and cybercrime laws are already enough, with the real problem being government officials themselves who spread falsehoods and wrong information.
“A number of government officials, politicians and other public figures tend to play fast and loose with the facts in the process of misleading the public,” said Tordesillas, president of VERA Files. “These lies spread easily owing to the big following and wide reach of these public figures, including on social media.”
Lawyer Antonio La Viña, former dean of the Ateneo School of Government, said the problem on fake news needs a smart solution, proposing to regulate online platforms, instead of publishers, so as not to curtail the right to free speech.
Former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, meanwhile, proposed that Congress create an Institute for the Integrity of Information, which he described as “a sort of Ombudsman for public information provided by government, or an information police for government officials.”
Hilbay said the institute should be composed of academics, media practitioners, policymakers, scientists and information technology experts “of the highest credibility and competence” who should not be appointed by the president or any of the president’s alter egos.
In a statement, the human rights coalition Advocates for Freedom of Expression Coalition-Southeast Asia (AFEC-SEA) conveyed their “grave concern” over the fake news bill, and urged the Senate not to criminalize fake news.
“An anti-fake news law will present a serious chilling effect on freedom of expression,” said lawyer Gilbert T. Andres, chair of AFEC-SEA, which includes as members the Center for International Law Philippines, Philippine Internet Freedom Alliance and other nongovernment organizations from Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and the Philippines.
The proposed law “can be used to harass journalists and media organizations that carry news articles perceived to be critical of any ruling administration,” Andres added. “Ironically, an anti-fake news law might even actually protect fake news perceived to be beneficial to the ruling dispensation.” — with Maria Feona Imperial, Daniel Abunales, Arianne Christian Tapao and Jake Soriano |
Jason Merritt / Getty Images Fame and fortune often makes us think of the usual celebrity artifice that goes hand in hand with anyone big-name in Hollywood: An endless cash flow, million-dollar bank accounts, extravagance, excess, prime real estate, luxury cars — maybe a little bankruptcy thrown in for good measure.
Not every star and starlet out there lives up (or down, however you look at it) to this stereotype. In fact, many well-known A-listers are actually some of the most financially responsible people … even more than regular people. One star that's continually pointed to as a perfect example is Jennifer Lawrence. Though the Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook star's financial wealth is climbing, she's known for staying frugal.
At just 22 years old, Lawrence has been thrifty and realistic right from the start, making her a good role model for younger people who haven't yet developed good money habits yet.
Jennifer Lawrence: Oscar Winner and Frugal, Too
"J. Law" was born into a middle-class family in Louisville, KY, in 1990. She's credited her mother, a camp counselor, and her father, a former construction firm owner, for instilling in her good financial values from the start.
"I was raised to have value for money, to have respect for money, even though you have a lot of it," she told the U.K. magazine Fabulous last month. "My family is not the kind of family that would ever let me turn into an a**hole or anything like that, so I am fortunate to have them."
What kinds of frugal banking habits does Lawrence practice? For one, she lives in the same 3-bedroom apartment since she moved to Los Angeles several years ago, and hasn't rushed out to buy a house yet.
Lawrence has no personal assistants to do her shopping and she won't be found frequenting any uber-high-scale stores, preferring to clip coupons like the rest of us.
She's also cautious to use valet parking, but she compensates by driving an economical car. Lawrence still has the same Volkswagen she's owned for years now — unlike other rich stars, she hasn't run out to buy a Bentley or Bugatti. Since her Best Actress win for The Silver Linings Playbook, she has been spotted in a new Chevy Volt, but at a $39,000 price tag, it's 10 times cheaper than what most other celebrities get behind the wheel of.
"I still look for bargains when I go to the market," she said in another interview. "What I am doing now is allowing someone to park my car but for that I have to pay four bucks."
Lawrence also said that she can't envision spending lots of money on frivolous purchases — think $6 for a Snicker bar. Frugality is so ingrained in her lifestyle, she apologetically admitted that a $500 order of Gummy Bears while hanging out with Lenny Kravitz was, in fact, an accidental purchase.
Top of the A-List
Her thrifty lifestyle is impressive for anyone, but it's made more remarkable for the fact that Jennifer Lawrence's net worth is in the millions of dollars … soon to be the tens of millions. As of this year, the actress' total worth is estimated between $2 million to $7 million, according to several sources, and will soon grow with a number of upcoming film roles.
For Jennifer Lawrence, salary growth has happened at a meteoric pace since her film career started blossoming in 2010. She was only paid a scale rate for her role in 2010′s Winter's Bone. Despite receiving an Oscar nomination for that film, many people criticized Lawrence's modest $500,000 pay for the first Hunger Games installment last year, considering how the movie grossed more than $691 million.
"Seeing as the movie has surely beaten any and all goals … we expect Lawrence should be receiving her payout," said Kirsten Acuna of Business Insider upon the film's release last year.
According to publication Screen Rant and other sources, Lawrence will be getting her due, after her Best Actress win and past X-Men success: For the Hunger Games' upcoming sequel, Catching Fire, she'll earn $10 million, placing her on the fast track in a few years to become one of the world's highest paid actresses.
A Silver-Lined Financial Future
Combined with her smart financial choices, Lawrence is one of Hollywood's rare figures, commanding high earnings through pure talent — and using them to good measure. The actress isn't an older star who learned her financial lesson after years of money problems. She's also not a ticking time bomb like the Lindsey Lohans of the world. She's someone who can afford the best, but chooses to spend only enough to get by.
Lawrence is part of a new generation of financially literate celebrities (like Zooey Deschanel), smart with the money choices they make in life. Anyone young or old can take several cues from her on striking a good balance between earning and spending — proof that not all million-dollar celebrities are wasteful with their finances. |
Apple is leading overall online tablet sales for the previous 12 months ending in October. But for the first time, Microsoft and its rival devices have earned a mini-victory.
Microsoft’s tablets, including the Surface Pro 4 and Surface Book laptop-tablet hybrid, had a 45% share of U.S. online tablet sales in October compared with 17% for Apple, according to data analytics company 1010data.
This is a milestone for Microsoft, which has trailed Apple (AAPL) in every month for the past year. It shows that Microsoft (MSFT) is making headway in a push into the tablet market that started slowly in 2012.
However, for the 12 months, Apple dominated the tablet sector overall in online sales. During that period, it had a market share of 34% versus 19% for Microsoft.
1010data said its data comes from millions of U.S. consumers who voluntarily share their shopping histories. The report did not take in account customers who purchased their tablets in brick-and-mortar stores, such as Apple’s retail stores or Best Buy.
The survey lumped together both tablets and variants of the devices known as laplets, 2-in-1 PCs, and detachables.
A report by International Data Corporation earlier this week said that overall shipments of tablets have declined 8% in 2015 compared to last year. The IDC analysts, however, said that sales of detachables had increased and that Apple’s iPad Pro could help bolster overall tablet sales.
The 1010data survey authors wrote in their study, “Without the inclusion of laplets, the tablet category would appear relatively flat or even declining when in reality, the category is evolving.”
Subscribe to Data Sheet, Fortune’s daily newsletter on the business of technology.
For more on tablets, check out the following Fortune video: |
More than 60 per cent of retirees face a looming crisis of running out of money before they die, with the Turnbull government on notice to encourage older Australians to take up retirement income products.
Research from global wealth and retirement consultant Mercer shows most people only have enough savings to last 14 years beyond retirement and will, on average, outlive their savings by five years.
Mercer has iterated the income crisis as it relaunches its world-first pooled risk product LifetimePlus designed to offer a continuous income, which grows as customers age.
The product, first launched in 2014 but recently tweaked to include growth investments and more flexibility, manages longevity risk across a pool of at least 1000 lives, with options for people to exit and recoup up to 95 per cent of their funds if they don’t survive 10 years beyond retirement.
The income-based product needs about a quarter of retiree’s savings to ensure income until death and will sit alongside fixed income insurance-based annuities and deferred annuities in an otherwise sparse market for Australians looking for an adequate income above the age pension.
Mercer senior actuary David Knox said Australians were underestimating how long they will live, a problem compounded by Baby Boomers’ expected unsustainable spending habits.
“People that are in their 80s or 90s now grew up in The Depression and WWII and had an initial lifestyle that was pretty tough and learnt to live it tough,” he said.
“The Baby Boomers have had a pretty fortunate life and I think there’ll be an attitude amongst them to keep living and spending.”
Mr Knox said spending did not necessarily decrease with age because active spending on travel and lifestyle switched to medical and aged care expenses in later life so there was a need for income to grow throughout retirement.
It comes as financial service providers pressure Social Securities Minister Christian Porter to incentivise more MyRetirement products as recommended by the 2014 Murray Inquiry into the financial system.
The Actuaries Institute last week said financial service companies were keen to develop products to give retirees confidence of an assured income but were hamstrung by how such products would be treated in the means test for the age pension.
Mr Porter has said government is developing fair means-testing rules to encourage more innovative retirement income products based on consultations with the sector.
Patricia Pascuzzo, executive director of independent think tank the Committee for Sustainable Retirement Income, said she had contributed to the means testing review, urging federal government to clarify its means test for the age pension to unlock a range of products to ensure adequate retirement incomes.
“The fact is that many Australians are having a lot of difficulty in managing their longevity risk,” she said.
“We’re seeing a lot of evidence of pensioners living quite frugally because they are unsure how long they’re going to live.
“There is also one in five who are drawing down on their super at an unsustainable rate.”
She said Australians generally needed a retirement income of about 60-70 per cent of the pre-retirement earnings and superannuation trustees should be “nudging” people into appropriate income solutions.
“You’ve got more and more people who aren’t living with the peace of mind in retirement that they could have if they were given better support in the lead up and during retirement,” she said.
“This highlights the importance of making the most efficient use of their super balance and all their assets, including their house, in retirement given that many are not going to be self-sufficient and still reliant on the aged pension.” |
When President Trump announced in early August, following a presidential commission’s recommendations, that the opioid crisis was a “national emergency,” he called it “a serious problem the likes of which we have never had.”
A month has now passed, and that urgent talk has yet to translate into urgent action. While the president’s aides say they are pursuing an expedited process, it remains to be seen how and by what mechanism Mr. Trump plans to direct government resources.
While the president’s opioid commission, led by Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has urged him to move swiftly, Mr. Trump and his cabinet — primarily his health secretary, Tom Price — are trying to determine how best to move forward amid warnings from deficit hawks within the administration about the potential costs.
As with many of his campaign promises, Mr. Trump is discovering the realities of limited government resources, slow-moving agencies and the competing agendas of cabinet members, even as they try to push in the same general direction. The hurricanes that have struck Texas and Florida, and the costly recovery that will follow, appear to have complicated the process. |
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The U.S. Naval Academy held its graduation ceremony Friday morning, commissioning the newest class of weirdos into the ranks of the Navy and Marine Corps.
“I am pleased to send so many fine young officers to the fleet,” said Capt. Jim Cunha during the commencement ceremony, noting that the academy had spent the past four years transforming students from raw 18-year-olds to creepy 22-year-olds. “Now the Navy and Marine Corps will reap the fruits of our labor. They are excited to be getting officers who will stand motionless on the field during a softball game, get in the way of people trying to pass them during runs, and refuse to clean their own racks.”
“2nd Lieutenant John ‘Muddy’ Waters is our valedictorian,” Capt. Cunha said. “Funny story about him, once a girl smiled at him. Lt. Waters stood outside the female barracks for eight hours hoping to get a glimpse of her through the windows. That’s the kind of discipline it takes to be a leader of Marines.”
Soon after the ceremony, the Navy and Marine Corps will gain its next generation of awkward ensigns and second lieutenants who also happen to not have any idea what they’re doing.
One new graduate, Ensign Doug Hernandez, enjoys pulling the legs off of spiders and pouring salt on slugs. While he says he can’t wait to lead men in battle, he’s certain his men will be inspired by his unwavering patriotism and devotion to duty.
“I went without an iPod or sex for a year,” Hernandez told reporters. “Some people thought it was stupid but I knew it was to protect my family and defend our freedoms.”
“I hope you all go on to become high-ranking officers,” Capt. Cunha said in his address. “And I know that won’t be hard. Throughout your career you’ll be promoted over more capable officers because you went to the Academy. But never forget about your enlisted sailors and Marines, and how they should be viewed as subhuman beings.”
Students at the Naval Academy spend four years in college and spend three weeks every summer on Navy ships or with Marine units for training. According to sources, female midshipmen learn everyone in the fleet wants to have sex with them during these events. |
*** APRIL 26 2013 UPDATE THANKS TO www.liveleak.com/c/Dionysos_Pint *************************************************************************The Philadelphia Police Department is looking to identify three suspects who assaulted a 27 year-old-male with a handgun in Tioga.On April 22, 2013, at 6:45pm, the complainant was approached by a group of unknown males in the 3300 block of North 16th Street. One of the males reached into his backpack and pulled a handgun and pointed it in the direction of the complainant and stated "hey buddy". The complainant then ran into a house and called 911 and the suspects fled south on 16th Street toward Allegheny Avenue.Twenty minutes earlier a juvenile was captured on surveillance video approaching a female and point a handgun at her. The female puts her hands up as if she was being robber but then continues walking from the area.Suddenly another male appears and takes the handgun from the juvenile and walks east on Ontario Street. This male then drops to one knee and points the handgun in the direction of a group of males walking towards him. The suspect then runs toward the males with the gun in hand and then joins this group of males at 16th and Ontario Streets.Suspect Description: Suspect #1: Black male, 10-12 years-of-age, 4'9″, thin build, wearing a red t-shirt with white writing, blue shorts, green sneakers and a multicolored backpack. This suspect is wanted for questioning about the firearm. Suspect #2: Black male, 14-16 years-of-age, thin build, dark complexion, 5'5″-5'7″, wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt, dark pants with black and white sneakers carrying a red backpack. Suspect #3: Black male, 14-16 years-of-age, thin build, light complexion, close cut hair on sides, 5'5″-5'7″, wearing a red zip up hooded sweatshirt, camouflage pants with black and white sneakers.If you see these suspects do not approach them, contact 911 immediately. To submit a tip via telephone, dial 215.686.TIPS (8477) or text a tip to PPD TIP or 773847. |
The Stad Peninsula in Norway has one of the most dangerous coastlines in the region. As the meeting place between the Norwegian Sea and North Sea, the turbulent waters have claimed the lives of dozens sailors over the last several decades. Which may explain why Norway’s top coastal agency wants to dig a $272 million, mile-long “ship tunnel” to create a safer passage for commercial vessels.
Designed to accommodate ships as massive as Norway’s Hurtigruten cruise vessels, the tunnel would be nearly 150 feet tall, 118 feet wide, and more than a mile long. The Norwegian Parliament earmarked 1 billion Norwegian kroner, or around $118 million, for the project in the National Transport Plan for 2014–2023. Construction is set to begin as early as 2018.
Which is not to say this is a done deal. The coastal administration estimates that approximately 7.5 million tons of blasted rock would need to be removed, which could take up to four years to complete.
Ships might access the tunnel from the north in Selje, with southern access via the Moldefjord. This is where the Stad Peninsula is at its narrowest. The current proposal for the tunnel incorporates a bridge near the southern access so pedestrians can glimpse ships as they pass by.
If a ship tunnel sounds like an absurd idea, it’s probably because no one has tried to build one before. The Stad Ship Tunnel, as proposed by the Norwegian Coastal Administration, may never break ground, but Norway’s tourism industry is already stumping for the idea.
VisitNorway.com says the architecture firm Snøhetta put together these renderings as part of a photo project targeted toward politicians to help them make a decision. Which given how cool this thing looks, shouldn’t be that hard. |
There is a certain romance to fighting in Thailand, wherein you train for some time at a Thai gym, traditional or otherwise, and you find yourself accepted by the gym and become part of its extended family. You travel with the gym, the Thai boys, and you fight for them and alongside them. It’s a beautiful thing, and I’ve experienced this. But this is about the romance of a different, less common kind of fighting in Thailand; something I’ve truly come to love. Of course there is much more to fighting than the romance of it, and I spend a lot of time writing about those things, but here I take on the feeling of the way of fighting I’ve found.
I’m lying on my back, looking up at an almost perfectly round moon, one night shy of being full. There’s a cable running across my line of vision, up high, from it hang alternating flags that are red, white and blue (Thai flag), and yellow with a red dharma wheel that is a Buddhist flag. We’re at a temple; behind me to the right are two monks, perched atop the steps of one of the shrines so they can watch over the makeshift wall that separates the ring from the rest of the festival, so that admission can be charged. This line of flags cuts over the top of the bleachers that reach up some 20 or 30 feet above me, straight up so that I can see the backs of all the men sitting on the top tier. Occasionally a few of them turn around, usually between rounds of the fight in the ring, and stare at me as as I lay on my mat in the darkness – they talk among themselves. These are the only audience members to be able to see me, from our little reclusive spot behind the bleachers, which is cut off on either side by parked trucks. Kevin and Jai Dee are laid out next to me on our mat, which is overlapping a few inches with the two mats of a few male fighters also on the card: one is wrapping his hands, one is napping. When we first arrived we’d put our mat down with a small gap between that mat and ours and the man in charge, who would be acting as my corner tonight, insisted that we connect the grass-woven mats. Closing that gap was really important, even though almost nobody else was around.
The Thai Way is traveling in groups. If there’s a truck headed to fights (or wherever), standard procedure is to cram that truck as full as possible with your entourage, which can include kids who will be working the corner, as well as family and neighbors. The groups can be big. The fact that I travel alone to fights, just me, Kevin and Jai Dee, is unusual. Add to that the fact that I’m a foreigner (as is Kevin, so we aren’t even traveling with a Thai chaperon) and it’s even more strange. Usually a western fighter is brought out to festival fights by their gym and kind of led around – this was my experience for years at Lanna. Even though festival fights were my favorite (and still are), I was guided through them more or less by my gym. The boys would tell me when it was time to wrap my hands, change into my shorts, get my massage and go to the ring. There isn’t usually any English spoken, so if you can’t read the fight program or hear when your name is being announced, you don’t even have any clue when you’re fighting. Showing up to a situation like this where you don’t know anybody, don’t have group “backup” or support, don’t necessarily have any idea when or who you’re fighting, you’d be a kind of the sucker at the table. Imagine a guy walking into the casino and everyone assumes he’s loaded because he’s a westerner, then he saddles up to the table looking confused and being by himself and nobody is even certain if he knows the rules of the game being played – a fool and his money will soon be parted, right? That’s a little bit what it could be like as a foreigner with no entourage in tow at a festival fight. And yet this has become somewhat common for me.
Because I now train either bare-fisted or with a thin gauze wrap, very minimal, I’ve grown comfortable wrapping my own hands for a fight. I know my hands now and they “need” very little. It used to be that I really longed for the superb, artful wraps of my expert corners – men with hundreds of fights, and having cornered a thousands times, tight layers of tape and cloth with unique techniques in how to pad; but now I grow quiet with my own simple gauze and a little tape. In the past when I would see my opponent wrapping her own hands I knew I was in for a fight. She’s done this many, many times before and wrapping one’s own hands demonstrates experience. I’ve become that girl. The old men who see me doing this give me enthusiastic thumbs up and a nod of approval.
I find the venue, find someone to corner for me (or meet whomever has been asked to help me by someone back home). I wrap my own hands, and try to explain to the men who will be in my corner how I fight, my style, so they know what they’re working with – don’t be telling me to kick and kick and kick. Sometimes I’m not sure if I’ll get an oil massage or not, which is really only because I’m a woman and it might be considered impolite for grown men to do this for me. Sometimes my corner will go find some kids out of the crowd, or just any other young woman who knows a thing or two about Muay Thai, to do my massage so the man in charge of my corner doesn’t have to. It’s a game of just making it all work – largely improvised and different each time. But here’s the thing: the chaos of this kind of improvisation used to throw me for a loop. When I was fighting in the stadia of Chiang Mai, all kinds of “unexpected” events or small changes might freak me out: my corner not wrapping my hands until it was a rush to get into the ring; the boys who were meant to “take care” of me being completely used to the process of going to fights, to the point of boredom, so I felt like they didn’t care about me or my fight… and they kind of didn’t, but I still thought at that time that everything was important; or having items forgotten – oil, a handwrap, tape, the mongkol… and inevitably there was always something missing. But now this kind of chaos is expected and it doesn’t feel important at all. Somehow, before, anything that was wrong was a distraction; now, because something always goes wrong I just focus on the most simple elements. One handwrap? Sure, split it in two. No tape? No problem, tuck it in or find some to borrow. Cornermen who I don’t know not paying any attention to me until I’m actually walking to the ring? Right as rain, honestly. Because everything has been paired down and simplified. It doesn’t read as chaotic anymore, it’s just noise, a buzz around the very basic patterns of fighting. Just pure fighting.
A Nora
In this way, I’ve become something of a Ronin fighter. Kevin and I just finished watching an Anime called “Noragami,” which translates to something like “stray god.” In the show the different gods have regalia, which are divine instruments for the use of the gods in battle. But they’re also sentient souls, named and dedicated to one god – the god who gives them their name.
But a Nora is a regalia (weapon) with more than one name; they’re seen as tricky because they may serve more than one master, but they’re also very powerful and able to do things that the normal, single-master regalia cannot do (due to the limitations of rules, really). I definitely identified with the Nora, because as a fighter who goes out on her own, without her gym and without a corner at times, I’m something of a rogue spirit. It’s romantic in some sense, in that I have this freedom to fight as much as possible, beyond the interests of a single gym and its resources, and because I speak Thai and can discuss fights with promoters directly, tell the men who are cornering for me what to expect from me, etc, (I mention knowing the language a few times in what follows, its an important dimension to this possibility). I also have this capacity to “serve” the investment of anyone who is hosting me. A promoter wants me on his card, he can book me and I’ll show up and fight pretty much anybody. S/he wants to put money on me, I’ll fight to my utmost and can make money for that promoter, my corner, and anyone else who is keen to bet on me. But it’s not all romance; as a Nora there is a “tsk” and head shake that comes from fighting with more than one name (when I fight up North, Lanna uses their name on cards; when I traveled with O. Meekhun they used their name; when I fight anywhere else or give my name to promoters myself, I am always Petchrungruang) because it’s not the strict devotion that is expected of contracted fighters. (I’m not contracted, though I am always respectful.) This moral component is perhaps best captured by the English word stray.
In Thai culture you are largely the sum of who you belong to, not just your family, but your clan, your baan (“home”). You do not willingly disconnect yourself without consequences. You are woven from local fabrics. But you are also what you appear to be, your image is a real manifestation of you. Images, displays and surfaces have power, they are the foundations of belief.
The stripped-down, super simplified way of fighting where I just show up and get in the ring feels amazing in many ways. I’m not waiting for my team to get me ready, which even though I truly love my home gym and feel very much a part of them, is often an emotionally painful experience because I am simply not (and never will be) treated the way the boys are – the boys of Petchrungruang are its future, its economy, they are hopefully to become big Bangkok fighters. It’s awkward for the gym to deal with me, because they are somewhat traditional and only have the youngest boys help with my massage, but I’m also too old for them to treat me like a little kid who they can guide around everywhere. So I’m kind of ignored, which only feels bad because I want the attention you’d expect if there was a lot of importance placed in the fight. But that’s not how it works here; my gym will put money on me and not even tell me – that money is faith, it’s belief in me, rather than the “you’re going to be great!” pep-talk that my western brain so badly wants and simply won’t ever get. So it’s nice to not expect it – to not even desire it – because my corner is, in these far-away fights, comprised of strangers. By being this rogue fighter, I’m in charge of myself and any help that’s offered to me is simply appreciated. I’m very self-directed because of this independence, and that feels good to me. I can bring good reputation to my gym by fighting hard, by winning in the outlying provinces, by impressing the promoters and gamblers so they remember me and want me to fight again. And I can bring money to the gamblers and promoters who put their financial faith in me. But I have to win.
I have affinity for the wandering, homeless, and thoroughly ethical fighter. The romance of it is captured perhaps best the incredible Zatoichi series (above) which follows the adventures of a blind swordsman as he journeys across Japanese countryside, from village to village, encountering a world ruled by local powers. I watched these films at length long before I thought to come to Thailand, and it makes a remarkable coincidence (or perhaps none at all) that I find myself in the Nora position at times, traveling out to fights, fighting at very high numbers, now often with very little support present. There is something incredibly sympathetic about the Ichi character.
I am coming back to my mat, turning to accept congratulations, and alternately have my makeshift corner start messing with my wraps, picking at the adhesive that stubbornly clings to the gauze underneath. A grandmother is grabbing my bicep and working her way down my arm in a combination of disbelief and wonder. Perhaps she bet on me. It is not uncommon for people to want to touch you after you have won, to – it would seem – rub off some of the merit, the glow of what makes victory, the luck of who you are in that moment. If you win a raffle, people might gather around to touch you and glean some of that luck. And you can share it – there’s no risk of it being “rubbed away.”
The Beauty of Gambling
In many circumstances in Thailand promoters will book westerners on their cards for novelty and interest. In cities like Pattaya, Chiang Mai, Bangkok (or perhaps the Islands), a non-Thai on the card is expected to sell tickets. For some it’s simply that tourists want to see a Thai vs. Westerner fight, maybe their own countrymen; and for some the promoter knows that booking a westerner from a gym means all the other westerners at that gym will buy tickets to come support. But out in the countryside, the novelty is for Thai gamblers. Kevin and I are often the only westerners at all when we walk through the huge crowds of festival fights (see the video below). So, booking a westerner as novelty is one level of fighting out in the countryside or stadia far away from my home gym. But putting money on me is a different thing entirely. It’s the promoter putting skin in the game, so to speak, and ensuring a tough fight. Gambling is complex in Thailand, but it’s of incredible importance and it’s the heartbeat that pumps blood through Muay Thai across the country, especially in the provinces. There are the odds, which is how the crowd bets on fights, but there’s also the “side bet,” which is basically each side in any given match saying, “our fighter will beat your fighter.” If you want to put 10,000 Baht on your fighter (about $280 USD), then the opponent’s side has to agree to that sum and match it. It has to come from legitimate belief that your fighter can win, otherwise you’re just handing someone money. Coming out to these fights without my gym, without a corner, without some kind of representative, the side bet is tricky. Part of the pressure on me to win is that, whatever happens in these fights out there, that’s what the promoter and the gamblers will remember; it either opens a door or closes it. And by not having my own gym present, which knows that I have good days and bad days, knows my strengths and has built belief in me over the course of almost two years now, when I come out here alone that belief has to be sprung from “reputation” for the promoter to put down money on me for a side bet. He or she has to believe, “I think my fighter can beat yours.”
I wrote this on Facebook, describing events preceding my last fight:
The importance of the side bet. So about 30 minutes before my fight my opponent comes to my mat with her coach to size me up. This means we literally stand up next to each other. She was a good size, taller – Thai girls are really good at slumping down and looking smaller in these moments, it’s a skill and a hustle. She had a few kilos on me. 10 minutes later the promoter comes to the mat and starts talking about the matchup and that my opponent is demanding a 5,000 baht side bet. They won’t fight without it. Kevin and I look at each other, we don’t have 5,000 baht (about $150), and even if we did we couldn’t bet it in an uncertain festival fight where you don’t know how the refs will line up along local ties. We’re afraid the fight is going to be called off. No, no the promoter tells us, he’ll put up the sidebet. He just wants to tell me to fight “dem” (full, ie really hard). Yeah, no problem. That’s how I do. I guess she thought she had some easy money. I love this shifting aspect of festival fights.
There is something so beautiful about this. The attempted hustle on her part, the weighing of my reputation. People talk a lot about “fairness” of fights in the West. Fair, transparent judging, making sure everyone is within a kilo after huge weight cuts, so many mechanisms of “fairness”. But when you fight a lot, especially in these circumstances, you realize that there are advantages and disadvantages everywhere, every time, and in many variations. Weight is one of many aspects involved in trying to make a fair fight, by which we should mean a competitive match up. In these Ronin fights for me there can be judge or referee bias, so you are fighting uphill, no big deal – you have to control the fight more demonstratively. You may unjustly lose, no big deal (if you fought the fight you wanted to), it happens. This world of fighting is closer to Fight Club than it is to some internationally sanctioned tournament that produces a trophy or a belt. The weigh-in is to convince gamblers that there’s an attempt at making a match even; this may be required for both sides to make the side bet, but if both sides are convinced enough in their fighter’s abilities, then the weight can be disequal. This is fighting. You go, you see, you fight.
Personally, I would take a fight like this over 99 out of a 100 championship fights in a big arena, with belts or other pieces of public glory on the line. This kind of fight feels alive to me; it feels connected, even though I’m going out as a satellite. It has no hype. It is just fighting. And honestly, there is not much difference in the difficulty of the fight. I’ve fought World Champions in a hidden festival or a out of the way stadium, and on big shows. It’s the same fight. Yes, one gives you public acclaim in the West and attaches a belt or top event victory to your name on websites, and the other spreads your name through a grapevine of Thai murmurs. I prefer the latter, really. Nothing against those that hold belts, and fight big shows. I’m sure those achievements are very satisfying and worthy honors that last a lifetime… but this post is about the Romance of another path, the path of the Wandering Fighter. “Good for you… not for me.” In truth, in Thailand fights for titles and belts is about who you know, they are arranged by the connections your gym has, contacts with organizational promoters – usually in disregard to rankings – I’m not really connected in that way; but in my world contacts are often direct, with the promoter speaking directly to me to book me on their card. I love that; and that’s why these promoters will put their own money down for me, even though I’m a Nora. That’s why I can approach the ticket gate of a venue I’ve never been to before in the middle of nowhere, and tell them I’m a fighter in order to get through, and someone will inevitably already know my name or have seen me fight somewhere else before. That’s my “title.”
It is not uncommon for female Thai fighters to fight under multiple names (I assume males do, too; but I don’t follow them as closely). Sometimes they have a home gym name, but also a Bangkok name. Because they may be contracted they may make up a name for a region of fights, or even a particular fight, to hide their identity for match-up purposes or to avoid paying part of their purse to their contracted gym, or even just to be able to fight “off the books”. Names do shift in the female fight scene. A name reflects status and the context you are in.
Appearances
What cannot be left out is my appearance as I travel into the provinces. I’m never completely sure how I am seen, but I can tell you that I am starkly out of context. I walk into an Amazon Coffee when on the road and the teenage girls behind the counter talk loudly among themselves, not realizing I am understanding them. My sak yant are not just decorative, and among believers it must look like I am walking around fully armed, as in, weaponized. I have sak yant on my hands, which is an extreme placement, no doubt looked down upon by any with social standing – or with concern. And when I take my sweatshirt off, and stand there in my fight top, getting my massage, I am covered with very powerful images: a Sangwan Rahu (a dark deity) on my chest and two large Tigers and Takroh (authority and protection) on my back. The Sangwan is something almost exclusively tattood on males, and it is a little Old School. Beyond this I am incredibly muscled for a female. I really don’t lift weights much, the sum of it comes from just pounding the pads and bag, and lots of clinch, but naturally I gain muscle easily and I look like no other female seen in these areas. Possibly socially nefarious (tattoos read like how they might in the 1960s in the west), and magically incanted. For a long time I had a very hard time accepting the stares I would generate. They are rarely complimentary. But you do not commit to this way of life – not only my training, but also my spiritual path via sak yant – without owning what you have become and are becoming. I just must look unbelievable… and as a Thai-speaker I’m probably even stranger. I can’t count how many times I’ve uttered even the most minimal Thai and the response be utter shock. If there is a Romance in this, it is that I carry with me not only the appearance of how hard I train, in my physique, but I also carry with me the marks of the kinds of superstitious beliefs that mean something in the provinces; and they mean something to me. I am ultimately alien, but not only because I am farang. I am alien in almost everything that I appear to be, a complete anomaly. And when I fight strong, in my clinch style, all that armored imagery and physique looks like it comes to fruition.
How Unique this Is
I’m not sure if anyone has fought like this in Thailand, and if they have they are very few, and they’ve left no record other than a few stories told to friends – it’s one reason why I write. There is a constellation of qualities, relationships and capacities that all allow this way of fighting to exist – for me. Firstly, I have the blessing from my trainer and the owner of my gym (Pi Nu) to find fights for myself outside of Pattaya. Without that, I would be disrespecting him with this kind of promiscuous fighting. This is extremely important. I asked him if I could use his name when I fought around Thailand and at first he was hesitant, he didn’t know me yet; but now that I’ve established myself, he’s proud of me and proud of my reputation being connected to his gym. That took time; that was earned. And he still is proud of me when I lose. But in order to make these fights possible I also have to be able to talk directly with promoters, to follow the women in weekly magazines who are around my weight class to ask for as opponents. So speaking Thai, and just as importantly being able to read and write it opens this world to me. Often these venues are hard to find, as they’re temporary rings set up in fields or on temple grounds. Being able to find them with a rented car requires GPS (the godsend, without which this would not be possible), LINE texting in Thai, understanding what people are saying to me when I hunt for directions, etc, is essential. Even 5 years ago I’m not sure this would have been possible, technologically. And small things like being able to hear my name on the loudspeakers, so I know when to get ready on cards that are shifting their order of fights over and over; being able to read the program, and ask questions, all of this is important when not having a Thai buffer when we arrive at these rings. These things remove a thick layer between myself and the fight, make it feel purer for me. A simplified version of fighting.
And of huge importance is having learned the ropes of traveling for fights after my GoFundMe 1.5 years ago that allowed the possibility of renting a car and driving to other provinces in order to keep fighting. First and foremost was just being able to afford traveling to fight, to rent a car, to stay the night in a local hotel. This was how I got my name out there and made connections with promoters outside of Pattaya. And that was made possible by people who follow my page believing in me and supporting what I do; without that support none of this would have been possible – now this site and my fighting is supported monthly on Patreon. Everyone who contributed to that created a long lesson for me in “How to Travel to a Fight”, social and pragmatic lessons taught in small steps. Everything from how to get to where I’m going to how to build relationships around promotions. Now when I go to fights I will often leave with a phone number that can lead to future fights, sometimes not even with the same promoter but someone else in the stands excited by my fight and who wants me to come to their province, their promotion, which is how I met Madam Khem, who is my Isaan manager now and one of very few big female promoters. She’s amazing.
I do not believe you can achieve this, especially as a female fighter, out of a single gym, home or Thai family. The deeper you settle in the culture of a traditional gym, as a woman, you take the role of a woman. The expectations change for you.
Mai Mee Baan – The Homeless Ronin
The expectations change for you. You have to constantly struggle against the stagnation of belonging, while proving that you belong out of the respect and devotion you give. Female fighting is not lucrative, and women are more or less expected to stop fighting almost as soon as they can. Even as a man in a gym, where you fight, with whom you fight, and an what shows you fight all depends on the connections of your gym – for a western female this can be even more so the case. I do still get fights through my gym, including out in the countryside because some of the men who are peripheral to my training (avid gamblers Small Man and Chicken Man who live at the chicken farm attached to the back of the gym) will book me for fights in Isaan, even if they don’t come with me. So those connections are very important, they are part of the extended reach of my gym. But because I have my own relationships also, those that have arisen from fighting itself, the possibilities are much wider – it’s who I know as well.
Just after my most recent fight up in Pak Thong Chai, where the promoter had put up the side bet for me when my opponent demanded it (thus earning him 5,000 Baht – $140 USD), he said to me after the fight, “I have your number now so I can call you to book more fights.” I told him that was great, that I’d love to come back anytime and next month is pretty open. That seems great, this is exactly how I make connections in order to book fights at a high rate. But here’s the second element: it’s probably slightly uncool for him to cut out Chicken Man straight off like that. That’s who made this fight for me in the first place, even though he totally passed me off by not coming with me as my corner. It’s nothing nefarious at all, but in terms of how things are done, I suspect there’s something slightly off about cutting him out to book with me directly. It’s part of being a Nora fighter and it is, in essence, further severing me from my gym rather than tying me back into it. I suspect that this is possible in part because I’m not Thai – there’s a looseness in the rules which allows behaving in a way that is outside of one’s own custom or social parameters. When I arrived back at Petchrungruang the next afternoon, driving back from Khorat the morning after the fight, having a nap and then heading straight back to training, nobody at the gym was surprised to see me. But everyone knew where I’d gone and most of them knew the name of who I was fighting; they wanted to know how the fight went, what round I’d won in, was there a side bet, etc. I was filling them in on all these things that should have been shared experience in a normal situation. And while their not being there is slightly unsupportive of me (they could have driven out to corner) – and me going alone is slightly like the semi-stray cat strolling in – there was still this feeling of pride; like I’d gone out and represented them well and brought the name esteem. But because of the negative qualities of being a Nora, which I’m only really able to do because I’m so strange (a western woman who wants to fight all the goddamn time), I have to make doubly sure that I show the qualities of respect and affiliation to the gym. I deeply value my home gym, as well as other gyms that have helped me develop. I am loyal to them, and in the end their respect is a decisive aim for me. It doesn’t really matter what is said or thought, as long as my gym and my trainers appreciate me.
Why Fight Like This?
The first and most obvious answer is this: I believe that this is the way one becomes the best fighter she can be… fighting a great deal. I mean this not only in terms of performance in the ring, but also in a deeper way. We all discover things about ourselves as we push through marital arts, and in the fights we have, and there just are things about you that you will not discover in 20 fights, or 50 fights. For me, after 70 fights, after 100 fights, after 130 fights. Extended losing streaks strip away surface things, extended winning streaks nourish and solidify. I’ve uncovered things within me that I just could not see without going through it – unless you’ve been there you cannot know. You may think you have it down at whatever point you are at – what fighting means, what fighting is about – but there is more. I fight like this to get to the next layer.
Another, perhaps less obvious answer is that this is just a privilege to be able to fight in Thailand, the home and cradle of Muay Thai. Each and every fight is precious. And every time you fight it changes you. There is nothing like it. We all have a very limited time to experience these things – even someone like John Wayne Parr, who has retired a few times, realizes that there is nothing like a fight, and every fight is golden. When you stop – and we all do stop, eventually – it is finished. So I am determined to experience fighting as much as I personally can. This is time you cannot waste. You will never be at this place in your life again. Like a person who lived through the Depression and as a result continues to hoard every piece of aluminum foil long into life, I remember how incredibly hard it is to find a fight – especially at my weight – in the US. I remember fighters like Amy Davis who had to go years without opponents, and I refuse to not honor that reality. I will fight because fighting is extremely valuable, and it is limited. I want to see what is beyond the next bend, and I want to report it to others. If you draw the map others can explore it and expand on it.
I Do Have a Home, I Return To It
With all this said, I am not a mai mee baan fighter; I’m not homeless. I have a home in Petchrungruang and I am strongly devoted to it. Additionally, gratefully, I also feel very much a part of it. What I do is uncommon and if I were a Thai boy would simply not be allowed. But for all the dismissal I face for not being a Thai boy, I also have liberty because of that.
Nobody wants to see the Zatoichi episode where he settles down and stops roaming. As much as it feels sad to see him walk away from what appears to be settling, that is his way; he’s got to ramble on. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t experience real connections – he would draw his sword to protect the people he has met along his journey who he truly loves… but he won’t lay down his sword because it would end the world of Zatoichi. But even I have more of a home than a Zatoichi. Being a stray is not unburdened and it’s certainly not uncomplicated. But that doesn’t mean it’s disconnected or disloyal; you can be respectful and self-directed at the same time. It’s hard for me to communicate that both of these tendencies exist within me at the same time. I can be respectful and loyal, while I’m still reaching for the freedom to become what I can be. I know Pi Nu feels my loyalty and my gratitude, and for me that’s all I require. Pi Nu, has shaped me and helped me evolve in a way that makes me feel indebted to him. But in the way you may feel indebted to your parents, to a mentor – the kind of debt that cannot ever be repaid other than in the continued desire to try to repay it. It took Pi Nu a while to see what I am, and a little longer to accept it, and now to actually embrace and advocate for it.
Thank you to everyone who champions me on Patreon.
A Little Video
Below are two videos to give a feel of what I’m talking about. The first is footage of me walking out to my corner through an enormous crowd of gamblers at my last fight in a festival in Pak Thong Chai in Nakhon Ratchasima province in Isaan. The second is a few kilometers from the festival, driving home the following morning. The wind on the microphone makes it all seem more eerie than it was, but in a way it really is other-worldly, attached by the string of a GPS signal, so we can know where we are going, surrounded by farmland and gravel roads.
Walking Through a Crowd
Driving Home From Isaan
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Traces of cocaine discovered in Britain’s churches (Picture: METRO/Myles Goode)
Traces of cocaine have been found in churches up and down the UK – including St Paul’s Cathedral, it has been claimed.
Tests were carried out in the toilets of 25 well-known places of worship in Britain.
Swabs taken from toilet seats and cisterns revealed traces of the Class A drug in the bathrooms of 11 of them, according to the Sun which carried out the investigation.
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Traces of cocaine were found in St Paul’s Cathedral (Picture: Ratikova/Ratikova)
They include St Paul’s Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral and St Leonard’s Shoreditch in London; St Ann’s and Christ Church Moss Side in Manchester; Renfield St Stephens and St Aloysius in Glasgow; St John the Baptist in Cardiff, Our Lady and Martyrs in Cambridge, St Martin in the Bull Ring, Birmingham and Canterbury Cathedral.
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A spokesperson for Canterbury Cathedral said it was ‘sorry’ to hear cocaine had been found.
A spokeswoman for St Paul’s added: ‘These are public toilets used by a great many members of the public, and we have about two million visitors a year.’
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Doctors removed a 4-month-old baby from life support Saturday night, and now his father is charged with his murder.App Users: Watch mobile videoFamily members described 4-month-old Jayceon Chrystie as a happy and healthy baby boy.They want to see that his father, Daniel Cox, gets the maximum punishment for the crime police said he committed.Police said Jayceon was beaten by Cox as he drove on South Dixie Hwy.“You just can't imagine someone beating a child like that while they are driving,” Dena Stevenson said.Stevenson, her husband and her daughter were among those traveling behind Cox on Thursday."He would hit the child. Turn around and bounce to his music. Twist his hat and hit the child again," she said.Stevenson and her husband were concerned for the child and so they called 911."He was hitting hard, swinging hard and, you know … he was literally hitting the baby in his head or in his chest or something,” Stevenson said.According to court records obtained by WLKY, Cox dropped Jayceon off in the driveway of the mother's home on Franklin Court in Radcliff, he was not breathing and he did not have a pulse.Doctors said Jayceon's left eye was swollen, he suffered swelling to his head and his right cheek and they noticed bruising on his butt and back.Jayceon was his mother's only child.Family members said Cox did not live with Jayceon.Cox told them he was taking the baby to visit one of his children for about an hour.Cox has been charged with child abuse and murder.His bond is set at $600,000.He will be back in court Monday morning.Read original report here. |
The Conservatives have their balanced budget — barely.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver has managed to keep the Conservatives' 2011 election promise to return Canada to a surplus in 2015 with a federal budget that has the government spending $1.4 billion less than it takes in — despite a spate of pre-election tax cuts announced last fall.
But the slim surpluses for this year and the next three years were bolstered by setting aside a smaller contingency fund than they planned just a few months ago in the fall economic update, as well as sales of some assets. Savings from public sector negotiations that haven't yet taken place also helped put the budget barely into the black.
Without shrinking those rainy day funds, the Conservatives would still be in deficit for 2015-16 and would be projecting a $0.9 billion surplus in 2016-17.
It's also clear how fragile the surplus is: a one-year, one percentage point decrease in the expected two per cent growth rate would drop the federal government back into deficit.
Oliver, however still found room for targeted tax measures to dress up a budget his party will take into the next election:
The annual contribution limit for tax-free savings accounts rises to $10,000 from $5,500, effective immediately.
Seniors at age 71 can leave more money in their tax-sheltered Registered Retirement Income Funds each year to help their savings last longer.
EI benefits to care for a sick or dying relative extended to six months from current six weeks.
A new home accessibility tax credit to renovate homes to make them more accessible for seniors and people with disabilities.
Small businesses earning less than half a million dollars will see their tax rate cut to nine per cent from 11 per cent by 2019.
Industry will see the accelerated capital cost allowance for new equipment extended 10 years.
Changes to student grant and loan programs to ease eligibility for short-term students and working students.
"Canadians need a break. Their expenses are significant," Oliver told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. "It's important for us to make life as affordable as we can."
However, while the government last year doubled its fitness tax credit for children, it seems to be pulling back on a promise to implement the same measure for adults. Budget 2015 notes the government promises only to put together a panel to "study the potential scope" of an adult fitness tax credit.
Oliver said oil prices fell so far last year that they aren't likely to plunge again. He also found reassurance in the growth projections of private-sector economists and Bank of Canada governor Stephen Poloz.
A whole volley of questions could be asked about possible changes to the government's $291 billion in revenue or approximately $289 billion in spending, Oliver said. But the one important fact is irrefutable:
"Our revenue will be greater than our expenses. That's how a balanced budget works," he said.
NDP, Liberal criticism
The NDP and Liberals criticized the government for moving ahead with income-splitting for two-parent families, which is most beneficial to families with a single high income. They also took aim at the increase in contribution room for tax-free savings accounts to $10,000.
Finance Minister Joe Oliver, left, and NDP Leader Tom Mulcair take part in TV interviews after the federal budget was tabled in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said Prime Minister Stephen Harper is "stubbornly clinging to his view" that the best thing to do for society is help the wealthiest.
"He wants to increase the tax-free savings account, which is very nice if you have $60,000 in your back pocket," Mulcair said.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said his party would reverse the TFSA increase if it were in government.
"The TFSA itself, up to $5,000, is an encouragement to people to save and there's a lot of Canadians who do that," Trudeau said.
"But the reality is there's not a lot of people who at the end of the year have $10,000 laying around that they can invest."
The smaller contingency fund also raised Mulcair's hackles. He accused the Conservatives of abusing it to show a balanced budget in an election year.
"I think that's probably the contingency they're worried about ... the election."
Money for security
The government further massaged its bottom line with a promise to cut public service disability and sick leave, a pledge based on negotiations yet to take place. The budget projects the government will save $900 million in the current fiscal year due to "ensuring a healthier and more productive public service."
Joe Oliver, after a weeks-long delay brought on by falling oil prices and a sagging economy, has tabled his first budget as finance minister. It's a budget his party will take into this fall's federal election. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)
Some of the programs were announced in previous budgets and are being re-announced. A series of measures for veterans falls into that category.
The budget also includes money for national security and defence, including $360 million this year for the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Canada has committed to a renewed six-month combat mission in Iraq and Syria, which is set to expire in the fall.
The Conservatives are also promising to increase spending for National Defence from an annual 1.5 per cent increase to an annual three per cent increase, although the department has returned billions in unspent funds in recent years.
Other security-related spending includes:
$36 million over the next years to improve security on Parliament Hill.
$292.5 million for the RCMP, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and Canada Border Services Agency for counter-terrorism.
$2.5 million a year more for the Security Intelligence Review Committee, which reviews CSIS.
$19 million over five years for enhanced security for federal courts and court administration buildings.
$8 million over five years for better physical and IT security at the Supreme Court.
$10 million over five years to support police services in Ottawa.
$4 million over five years for security at Canadian Armed Forces bases.
$7.1 million this year to help train soldiers in Ukraine.
Some measures announced in this year's budget don't begin to take effect for years, including a new public transit fund to help cities fight traffic congestion by encouraging public-private infrastructure projects. |
Researchers in bicycle-mad Netherlands have come up with a novel way to get more cyclists out during the harsh winter months while also lowering the number of injuries: heated bike paths.
“The idea is to install a system under bike paths to prevent ice forming in winter,” engineer Marcel Boerefijn from the Tauw engineering consultancy told AFP.
Several Dutch municipalities have already expressed interest in the system that uses geothermal energy drawn from 30-50 metres (100-160 feet) below ground.
While the idea would cost 20,000-40,000 euros (25,000-50,000 dollars) per kilometre of bike path, of which the Netherlands has over 35,000 kilometres, Boerefijn prefers to vaunt the pragmatic side of the plan.
“There would be lots of savings: less salt to melt the ice, less medical costs because of accidents and fewer car expenses because people would rather travel by bike,” he said, citing a figure of 7,000 bike path accidents a year.
The eastern Dutch town of Zutphen, population 40,000, is awaiting the results of a preliminary assessment expected early next year before embarking on a feasibility study at a municipal level.
The Netherlands has an estimated 18 million bicycles for a population of around 16.5 million. |
Growth hacking. It’s a term that’s becoming more and more popular – especially in the start up and technology world. But, what exactly is it? Essentially, growth hacking is a new twist on digital marketing that is more applicable and more effective in today’s overwhelmingly digital age.
Growth hacking is basically a way that very small or brand-new companies use analytical tools to analyze who is using their product, and how, and then relentlessly pursue growth for their businesses.
The ultimate outcome of growth hacking is that your marketing work will get a lot of users, those users will spread word about your product or company to more users, those users will spread the word to more users, and so on.
So, where did growth hacking begin? Its origins are usually traced back to the small technology start up that began popping up in the early 2000s, when companies became less focused on creating an appealing brand or image to sell their company, but rather sought to spread its popularity by simply getting people talking about it and getting big numbers of users.
What’s ingenious about growth hackers’ work is that the tools to market and build the company are often built right into the programs or websites they’re developing so that once the product is created, the users do the work themselves – for instance, how Pinterest requires users to share the product with other prospective users before they can actually use the site.
Growth hackers often take any road to finding more customers, whether it’s clearly “legit†or not – for example, Airbnb hacking Craigslist to get email addresses of potential users.
Growth hacking is definitely the marketing tactic of the future, particularly when social media is everyone’s main source of news, entertainment and social interaction. Are you interested in learning more about what growth hacking is, how it works, what growth hackers are like, and how to become one or work with one? Then, check out the list below.
These 20 sites are great resources for anyone looking to grow their company virally or understand how other companies did.
General Growth Hacking Information
These sites contain some really helpful information about the basics of growth hacking: how it began, how it works, and how you might approach becoming a growth hacker or deciding to work with one.
1. How Growth Hacking Came To Be
This article about the origins of growth hacking, written by expert Aaron Ginn, explains the history of the digital marketing scheme and how it came into existence. Ginn’s story makes the emergence of growth hacking make sense in the context of the rise of social media and Internet marketing.
2. Sixteen Ventures
Successful growth hacker Lincoln Murphy has a blog that is full of useful tips about marketing your SAAS business. Yeah, he is technically the competition but he writes good posts and knows his stuff so we think its worth your while checking out his blog.
3. Startup Marketing
Sean Ellis, the brain behind Startup Marketing, is often considered the godfather of growth hacking; in fact, he coined the term. Startup Marketing contains useful marketing tips for any start up, and it separates all of its posts into categories, so you can check out marketing resources that are most applicable to your company without having to parse through every post.
4. Mashable – The 5 Phases of Growth Hacking
Mashable is a site with tons of diverse content. This page contains a useful guide to the different phases involved in growth hacking. It gives a clear outline so users can understand the basics behind creating a page or product and getting it to the viral stage.
5. The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking
The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking was written by Neil Patel, a digital marketing consultant and expert on growth hacking. Patel founded successful analytics companies KISSmetrics and Crazy Egg. The Definitive Guide to Growth Hacking is a long, comprehensive examination of growth hacking, including information about the growth-hacking process, what growth hackers are like, and different tactics to get and retain users and members.
6. Defining a Growth Hacker
Ever wondered what makes a growth hacker different from a marketer or very enthusiastic start up employee? This page, written by expert Aaron Ginn, outlines many myths people believe about growth hackers – and then debunks them.
7. Growth Hacker Is the New VP Marketing
Andrew Chen is often credited with making the term growth hacker popular. In this article, Chen explains the place of growth hackers in a company and how they work within a business.
8. The 6 Best Growth Hacks to Get Customers Without Having to Pay for Them
Great analytics site KISSmetrics explains some easy growth hacks for companies. This site is a terrific basic start for anyone who wants to head down the road to virality.
9. Become a Growth Hacker
Are you interested in becoming a growth hacker? Then, check out this site that reviews Growth Hacker TV, a service that teaches growth hacking skills and provides instruction and interviews about growth-hacking techniques. This overview can help you decide what route you want to take to learn growth-hacking skills.
10. The Difference Between Growth Hacking and Marketing
Want to get a better understanding of how growth hacking actually differs from regular marketing schemes? Check out this article on TheNextWeb.com. It’s a clear list of how the strategies, staff and ultimate outcomes of hacking and marketing are different.
Real-World Growth Hackers And Growth Hacking StoriesÂÂ
So, now you have a better understanding of how growth hacking works and how it came to be. But are you curious about how it works in the real world – and whether it really works? If so, check out these real-life growth-hacking stories. They are proof of the strategy’s success, when you get it right.
11. Meet the Growth Hacking Wizard Behind Facebook, Twitter and Quora’s Astonishing Success
This profile of Andy Johns in Forbes outlines how he helped successful sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Quora seemingly exploded in popularity overnight. It’s an inspiring story that can make you believe in the power of growth hacking.
12. Real Examples of Growth Hacking in Action
Dailytekk.com includes stories of real-life growth-hacking success in this article about growth hacking in action. It has firsthand accounts from people like Josh Elman of Twitter and Aaron Ginn of StumbleUpon.
13. 5 Classic Examples of Growth Hacking
This page contains some more real-world, classic examples of how growth hacking works. It’s a great resource to understand how sites like Airbnb, YouTube and Hotmail got so popular so quickly.
14. 19 Growth Hacker Quotes
Want to hear more straight from the mouths of growth-hacking experts? This slideshow from SlideShare contains 19 quotes from growth hackers that give a little insight into their philosophies on marketing and expanding businesses.
15. BuzzFeed’s Brazen, Nutty, Growth Plan
BuzzFeed is one of the most popular sites on the Internet today. In this article, you can learn more about its nontraditional marketing tactics, and how it has developed a way to translate its pages within hours, making it a globally viral site.
Hiring A Growth HackerÂÂ
Are you interested in hiring a growth hacker for your company? These links include information about what knowledge and qualities a growth hacker should have. They are also useful resources for developing a viral marketing strategy of your own.
16. How to Find a Growth Hacker
Want to find a growth hacker who can take over marketing your website? This article has some helpful information about where to look for experts and what qualifications they should have.
17. So, You Want to Hire a Growth Hacker?
If you’re looking to hire someone to manage your growth hacking, this article is a definite must-read. It outlines some very important, specific qualities growth hackers should have in order to attract the most customers and work well at a tech company.
18. Hire a Growth Hacker, Not a Marketer
This article out of the UK explains multiple reasons that a company hoping to go viral with a program or website should follow a growth hacking trajectory and not a traditional marketing strategy.
19. How to Hire a Growth Hacker
This step-by-step guide to hiring a growth hacker is written by Aaron Ginn, one of the world’s leading growth-hacking experts and the growth hacker behind companies like StumbleUpon.
Growth Hacking Products
20. Hacker Bundle
Lots of growth hacks are built into programs and sites, so that they work inherently as the product works. However, if you’re interested in growing your already-existing product virally, this hacker bundle includes a bunch of really useful marketing tools at a very affordable price. |
Prices fell 1.4pc in October and the average house has seen £27,000 wiped off its value in the past twelve months.
The number of completed housing sales has now fallen to its lowest level since the Nationwide series began in 1974, the building society added in its lastest House Price Survey, driving the decline in prices.
The crisis in the financial sector and the latest Government data suggesting a recession is imminent is likely to worsen the housing market slump and has “uncomfortable implications”, Nationwide said.
“A looming recession and continued financial market instability have uncomfortable implications for the housing and mortgage markets, and will undoubtedly affect the pace of recovery in house prices,” Fionnuala Earley, the Nationwide’s chief economist, said.
“However the speed of the economic slowdown and the determination on the part of central banks to return stability to the financial markets does mean that interest rates are likely to continue to be cut sharply which will make life easier for borrowers on variable rate loans and those coming to the end of fixed rate deals. |
If you can get your hands on duck eggs try them!
I grew up having both chickens and runner ducks and the eggs taste 100% better than a grocery store egg. Eggs you buy at the grocery store are at least 3 weeks old! I am helping out a local farmer in Boulder, Co. and have had access to duck eggs again. So I have been experimenting with them in my baking. When I use duck eggs, I have to adjust the recipe due to the size and also the ratio of yolk to white. When I make sunny side duck eggs, I notice that the white can get rubbery. Duck eggs have less water, so it is easy to over cook them. Yes, it is more expensive then the grocery store but it is well worth it! The average certified organic eggs per dozen cost $5.00 for chicken and $7.00 for ducks.
Duck Eggs Vs Chicken Eggs: Size
-Most duck eggs are about 70 grams in weight and chicken eggs are about 50 grams.
I also noticed that a duck eggshell is a lot tougher than a normal chicken eggshell. Some people say because of the thicker shell that duck eggs can be kept in the refrigerator for up to six weeks. I recommend buying eggs from a local farm and using them within a week unless you plan to make a meringue. For meringues I like to use at least a week old eggs. It will whip better and get more volume. Because the duck egg is larger, it has a larger yolk to white ratio than a chicken. So if you want more yolks- then duck eggs are the way to go.
Duck Vs Chicken Eggs: Nutrition
Duck eggs have a few more calories! (A 100 gm of duck egg will provide about 185 KCal of energy, compared to 149 KCal of energy provided by a chicken egg)
Higher Protein in duck eggs!
Mineral content better in duck eggs!
Duck eggs have a higher Vitamin Content!
Duck eggs have a considerably higher cholesterol content, compared to chicken eggs.
Duck Vs Chicken Eggs: Taste
Duck eggs taste different and I believe they are tastier than chicken eggs. So it is best if you try one out to decide! Every thing you do with a chicken egg, can be done with a duck egg. That includes scrambling them, poaching and baking.
Duck Vs. Chicken Eggs: Baking
Many bakers comment that duck eggs have a higher fat content that make cakes rise higher and the meringues are more stable and can get more volume.
Duck eggs make baked items fluffier than chicken eggs- you will be amazed. You substitute one duck egg per chicken egg in the recipe, even though the duck eggs are bigger.
Due to the higher yolk ratio to egg white in duck eggs they contain more fat which in turn makes Baked goods richer.
“They are also a good addition to gluten free baking—what your baked good loses in structure by omitting gluten can be partially gained back with the denser albumen (egg white protein)”. -Jamie Oliver
Animals on the Jacob Springs farm located in Boulder, CO.
This video will make you laugh. It is a video that my mom made the night before all the ducks got attacked by the mob aka an animal.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ulx0oucWtcI |
Yetunde Hawanya Tara Price (9 August 1972 – 14 September 2003)[1] was the elder half-sister of, and personal assistant to leading tennis players Venus and Serena Williams. In 2003, Price was murdered in a shooting in Compton, California.
Background [ edit ]
Yetunde Price was the eldest of Oracene Price's five daughters. She was one of the Williams’ three other sisters, a half-sibling from a previous relationship between their mother, tennis coach Oracene Price, and Yusef Rasheed.[1]
For a time, Price worked as a personal assistant to her tennis playing sisters, and also as a nurse. At the time of her death, she was the owner of a hair salon. According to media reports, Price, despite "accepting some financial assistance" from her sisters, continued to live with her children in their house in a "run-down" district and continued to work as a nurse, also engaging in her personal-assistant responsibilities which saw her appear at Wimbledon in the year of her death. According to the reports, Price was "determined to pay her own way in the world."[2] Price was the mother of three children. [1]
Murder [ edit ]
On the night of 14 September 2003, Price was chatting with her boyfriend in her SUV, parked outside what subsequently was revealed to be a trap house in the suburbs of Compton. According to the prosecution at the subsequent trial, two members of the Southside Compton Crips street gang who were guarding the house opened fire on the SUV in the belief that they were "defending [the] crack house from gangland rivals," presumably the Lime Hood Bompton Pirus.[3] Price's boyfriend, who later stated he did not initially realize that Price had been hit, sped the car away to a relative's home from where he called emergency services. Price was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at hospital, from a bullet wound in the head.[3]
Both the prosecutor and the defense at the murder trial agreed that Price was an innocent victim, and that neither she nor her companion were in the area to buy drugs.[3]
Trial [ edit ]
Southside Compton Crips street gang member Robert Edward Maxfield, 25 years old at the time of his conviction, pleaded no contest to voluntary manslaughter on 22 March 2006, the day before his third trial for Yetunde Price's killing was scheduled to start. The first two trials had ended in a mistrial after jurors were unable to reach a verdict.[4] The first trial ended in November 2004 with six jurors voting for acquittal, five for guilt, and one undecided. A second mistrial was declared 29 April 2005 when jurors deadlocked at 11-1 in favor of conviction.[5]
A murder charge against a second defendant, who was accused of firing a handgun during the incident, was dismissed after the first trial, when authorities stated he did not cause the fatal wound.[5]
On 6 April 2006, Judge Steven Suzukawa sentenced Maxfield to 15 years in prison with the possibility of parole.[5]
Aftermath [ edit ]
Compton rapper Game's 2005 song "Dreams" is dedicated to Yetunde Price's memory.
In 2016, the Williams sisters opened a community center in Compton for "victims of violence and their families" called the Yetunde Price Resource Center. Its tagline reads: “Committed to helping others heal.”[6]
On 8 March 2018, Maxfield, after getting his sentence cut for "good behavior," was released on parole from the Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, California, having served approximately 12 years in prison.[7] In an interview with Time, Serena Williams said she learned of his release on 31 July, through Instagram, ten minutes before her match against Johanna Konta at the 2018 Silicon Valley Classic, a match she went on to lose 6-1, 6-0 to Konta in 52 minutes.[8]
References [ edit ] |
Something strange happens on the Moon for 5 days during every lunar cycle. Its surface becomes electrically charged. Dust kicks up suddenly. It might even swirl into a light “storm” as particles electrically repel each other.
These are the 5 days when the Moon’s orbit crosses Earth’s magnetotail, the vast region of the planet’s magnetosphere that gets swept back by solar wind. Within the magnetotail is a structure called the plasma sheet, a layer with a weaker magnetic field that’s relatively thick with ions.
“Our new finding suggests that the Earth-Moon system coevolves not only physically but also chemically.” Now results from Japan’s Selenological and Engineering Explorer (SELENE) lunar orbiter show that during this time when the Moon passes through Earth’s plasma sheet, significant amounts of terrestrial oxygen from Earth rain down onto the Moon’s surface. This has likely been going on since oxygen became abundant in Earth’s atmosphere some 3 billion years ago.
“Our new finding suggests that the Earth-Moon system coevolves not only physically but also chemically,” said Kentaro Terada, lead author on the study and planetary scientist at Osaka University in Japan. The research, published today in Nature Astronomy, hints that someday Moon dust could help scientists study Earth’s ancient atmosphere.
Solar Versus Terrestrial Oxygen
Solar wind, the collective stream of highly energetic particles that hurtle from the Sun, constantly batters Earth’s magnetosphere, shaping it into its characteristic teardrop form. Behind Earth, the magnetotail extends more than 600,000 kilometers.
While Earth gets buffeted by solar wind, some particles—including hydrogen and oxygen ions stripped of electrons—escape along Earth’s magnetic field lines into the plasma sheet. For a brief period during every lunar orbit, the Moon passes through the plasma sheet, where it’s exposed to these ionized particles of terrestrial origin.
But do these particles—in particular, oxygen ions—make it to the lunar surface, and if so, how would we know? Thus far, it’s been “an enigma,” Terada said. After all, oxygen carried on the solar wind also arrives at the Moon after it orbits out of Earth’s magnetotail.
Researchers decided to look at data from SELENE, nicknamed Kaguya, to see if they could pick up signs of terrestrial oxygen in the days when the Moon passed through Earth’s magnetotail. Data from Kayuga, which stopped collecting observations in 2010, revealed that during a few hours every month the orbiter was bombarded with oxygen ions reminiscent of a terrestrial origin. These moments corresponded to when the Moon orbited through Earth’s plasma sheet.
The researchers could fingerprint these ions because oxygen originating in the Sun is more often “multicharged,” meaning that more of its electrons get stripped away because of the Sun’s extreme heat, Terada said. The charge on these oxygen atoms might be +6, +7, or +8, whereas terrestrial oxygen generally loses only one electron.
Assuming that what happens at Kayuga also happens on the Moon, the lunar surface also gets pelted with this terrestrial oxygen. Prior models suggest that heavier oxygen isotopes might be the ones escaping from Earth, although more research is needed to fully verify this fractionation. But this, the authors wrote, could explain why some oxygen isotopes of lunar metals sampled by the Apollo missions have relatively high abundances of heavier oxygen isotopes.
The oxygen that hits Kayuga, and thus the oxygen that hits the Moon, travelled with high energy. Such high-energy particles would hit the Moon and burrow into lunar soil, worming some tens of nanometers deep into minerals, they suggested.
An Archive of Biogenic Oxygen?
Earth hasn’t always hosted an oxygen-rich atmosphere. In fact, oxygen didn’t appear in significant amounts until about 2 billion years ago, when tiny, aquatic creatures called cyanobacteria evolved and started converting carbon dioxide into sugar and oxygen molecules through photosynthesis.
This could be “a really useful thing to be able to look at if we want to understand how the Earth and its atmosphere evolved over time.” “We can’t exactly go back and measure the Earth’s atmosphere a billion years ago,” said Jasper Halekas, a physicist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City who studies solar wind’s effects on the solar system but wasn’t involved in Terada’s research. However, an archive of Earth’s oxygen on the Moon could provide a window into that past, he explained. So this could be “a really useful thing to be able to look at if we want to understand how the Earth and its atmosphere evolved over time.”
However, distinguishing old Earth oxygen, new Earth oxygen, and oxygen that arrived on the solar wind will be extremely tricky: “We have no method of dating the exact time at which the sample reached the surface,” the authors wrote.
Remember: the authors expect that high-energy ions burrow into minerals in lunar soil. There’s currently no way to tell whether one ion burrowed thousands of years ago or only yesterday. And although higher abundances of heavier oxygen arrive at the Moon from Earth, Earth delivers to the Moon all isotopes, so it’s impossible right now to tell where an individual oxygen ion hailed from. So any oxygen on the Moon’s surface that originated from Earth forms an archive that scientists can’t yet read.
But this currently inscrutable archive may still have secrets to reveal. “A fundamental question about the Moon and other ‘airless’ bodies is how their tenuous atmospheres work,” Halekas said. How are materials delivered to the airless body, how are they liberated from the surface, and how are they lost?
“This new result is a measurement of a source of that atmosphere, so it’s another piece of that puzzle,” he explained.
Analogue to Phobos
These results might not just help scientists study our moon, Terada said. He suggests that this research could be applied to Mars’s moon Phobos.
Recently, data from NASA’s Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission spacecraft revealed that Mars once sported a thick atmosphere like Earth’s but that it could have been stripped away by solar wind. Could Mars have delivered particles to Phobos in the same way Earth sends particles to the Moon?
In 2022, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) plans to launch a spacecraft to Phobos, with hopes of collecting and returning soil samples to Earth. Perhaps Phobos, if it has a record of ancient particles from Mars preserved on its surface, could help scientists understand how Mars lost its atmosphere, Terada said. That is, of course, if the code to determining when oxygen ions burrowed into minerals and where those ions came from can be cracked.
—JoAnna Wendel (@JoAnnaScience), Staff Writer; and Mohi Kumar (@scimohi), Scientific Content Editor |
What you see above is a flat image – just like any one of the millions of other flat images on the web. Until now this is how we have viewed images from our favorite games, photos from our favorite movie sets, pictures of other people’s cats, porn – anything really. But with VR entering the mainstream in the coming months, that is all about to change – as it enables a dimensionality never before possible, and with that change the way we display visual content is likely to change with it.
Sketchfab is one of the companies currently looking at addressing this problem, with webVR enabled embeddable 3D models. Sketchfab announced a partnership at Microsoft’s Build conference with project Hololens to bring 3D models into the augmented space, but they are also really looking into the VR space as well. It’s not just single models either, you can load in full still scenes, like this one:
And here is the Oculus viewable link. Oh and one for Cardboard as well (for all of you on mobile).
Looking at embeds like these I can only think of one thing, a revolution in screenshots for VR. Rather than representing a flat screenshot from a game that doesn’t truly do justice to how it looks in VR, content creators will be able to load up a model of a representative scene from the game that will be viewable in VR.
Take these for example:
Oculus version.
Cardboard version.
Oculus version.
Cardboard version.
Being able to preview a scene in this way would be a much more representative view of the experience. In fact, we already are seeing this kind of thing in practice. The new update to the Samsung Gear’s Oculus home page added 360 degree screenshots to Herobound and it would appear that that may be something other developers adopt as well.
We are moving beyond the flat screen with virtual reality, and the rest of the content on the web is going to have to follow. WebVR may be early, but it is coming – it is inevitable.
Tagged with: 3d, 3d models, HoloLens, microsoft, sketchfab, virtual reality, VR, webvr |
Senators send letter to Roger Goodell
Steve Delsohn reports the details surrounding the domestic violence charge against Panthers DE Greg Hardy.
Sixteen female U.S. senators have sent a letter to commissioner Roger Goodell calling for a "real zero-tolerance policy" against domestic violence in the NFL.
The letter was sent to Goodell on Thursday. In it, the senators say they were "shocked and disgusted" by the video released Monday of former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice striking his then-fiancée Janay Palmer in an Atlantic City, New Jersey, casino elevator and a subsequent report by The Associated Press that a league executive received the video from a law enforcement official in April.
"We are deeply concerned that the NFL's new policy, announced last month, would allow a player to commit a violent act against a woman and return after a short suspension," the letter reads. "If you violently assault a woman, you shouldn't get a second chance to play football in the NFL.
"The NFL's current policy sends a terrible message to players, fans and all Americans that even after committing a horrific act of violence, you can quickly be back on the field."
The letter ends with a call for the NFL "to institute a real zero-tolerance policy and send a strong message that the league will not tolerate violence against women by its players, who are role models for children across America."
The letter was put together by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and was signed by 14 Democrats and two Republicans.
President Barack Obama's press secretary released a statement earlier in the week, calling the issue of domestic violence "bigger than football."
"The president is the father of two daughters. And like any American, he believes that domestic violence is contemptible and unacceptable in a civilized society," the statement said. "Hitting a woman is not something a real man does, and that's true whether or not an act of violence happens in the public eye, or, far too often, behind closed doors. Stopping domestic violence is something that's bigger than football -- and all of us have a responsibility to put a stop to it."
Ray Anderson, formerly the vice president of football operations under Goodell, expressed his displeasure with the turn of events inside league headquarters.
"I am personally very disappointed that the leadership at the NFL's New York office seems to be swirling around in chaos," Anderson told Arizona Sports 98.7 FM. "That's sad, because there are too many good people working there that don't deserve that and I'll just leave it at that."
Anderson later added, "In my time in the league, I thought there was an appropriate moral compass. I struggle now because I'm not sure I have as much faith that is occurring."
The NFL has denied receiving the Rice video and announced late Wednesday night that former FBI director Robert S. Mueller III will conduct an inquiry into how the league handled evidence as it investigated the claims against Rice. The investigation will be overseen by NFL owners John Mara of the New York Giants and Art Rooney II of the Pittsburgh Steelers.
Terry O'Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, issued a statement late Wednesday, calling Mueller's appointment "just window dressing."
Rice, 27, was charged with felony aggravated assault in his case, but in May he was accepted into a pretrial intervention program that allowed him to avoid jail time and could lead to the charge being purged from his record.
After Goodell drew criticism for not being tough enough on Rice, he wrote in a letter to all 32 team owners in August, "My disciplinary decision led the public to question our sincerity, our commitment, and whether we understood the toll that domestic violence inflicts on so many families. I take responsibility both for the decision and for ensuring that our actions in the future properly reflect our values."
"I didn't get it right," he added. "Simply put, we have to do better. And we will."
First-time offenders now face a six-game suspension.
Carolina Panthers defensive end Greg Hardy, who was convicted on two counts of domestic violence and is appealing the verdict, remains active, as does Ray McDonald of the San Francisco 49ers, who is being investigated for abuse allegations.
The Panthers and 49ers have not publicly discussed details of their investigations, saying only that they are following the NFL's lead in waiting for the legal process to run its course.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. |
November 18, 2009 12:00 AM | Simon Carless
[Here's the latest postmortem extract from our colleagues at Game Developer magazine, and it's an exclusive from the most excellent and startlingly freeform Scribblenauts from the 5th Cell folks - excellent!]
The latest, November 2009 issue of GSW sister publication Game Developer magazine has just recently debuted, and includes a postmortem of 5th Cell's Scribblenauts, written by studio co-founder Joseph Tringali.
Scribblenauts, a unique word-driven puzzle platformer, was the third original Nintendo DS property from Bellevue-based 5th Cell. Its widely-discussed main hook is the ability for players to enter nearly any conceivable non-proper noun into its text parser, at which point the game will spawn that item into the world.
Initial Lack of Vision
The complaint most frequently leveraged against Scribblenauts revolved around its often-finicky touch screen controls, and 5th Cell acknowledges that the scheme was not given the attention it may have needed:
"The sensitivity of the stylus controls is easily the biggest issue in Scribblenauts, a fact that has been reinforced by reviewers and users. We knew this was going to take a big hit from reviewers, but we could only spend a limited amount of work on it. We discussed a secondary D-pad control option midway through development only to come to the conclusion it would take a single person 3–4 weeks to integrate it. On our self-funded schedule, that route was not an option."
"The root cause of this issue was limited time, and our decision to focus more on delivering what we had promised with the 'Write anything. Solve everything.' The slogan was the right one in the end, but it hurt the second most important part of the game, the controls.
"We still feel stylus control was the correct decision for Scribblenauts. The DS is a casual platform by design and allowing non-gamers the ease of use of a pencil-like system for a game targeted at everyone over a D-pad only scheme was overall the best choice. But in retrospect; our implementation of those controls was only at 50 percent of where it needed to be.
"It would have been better to cut a secondary feature early on, such as the Wi-Fi connection, to allow us the time to fully realize stylus controls. However by the time we realized controls would take weeks to get right from play testing, it was too late to cut features."
Localization
Most games have to deal with localization, but few games rely so exclusively on text not just for narrative concerns but for fundamental gameplay. As one might expect, that aspect of Scribblenauts proved difficult at times:
"Our products have always released worldwide, so we planned for localization in Scribblenauts from the start. We built in localization support for the dictionary in Objectnaut, and planned to handle in-game localization as we had in our previous titles. Unfortunately, Scribblenauts ended up with far more text then we anticipated, and because of the level finalization coming late, our hint text that displayed at the beginning of each level wasn’t localizable until the last minute.
"Our localization system for previous games had relied on a custom tool which pulled text from .txt strings and exported to Microsoft Excel, which could then be sent to the localizers. What was sent back was imported using the same tool and showed up in game. The tool itself was very useful, but optimized for previous titles that only had game text. With Scribblenauts, we had game text plus a huge dictionary, and they both utilized different systems.
"We delivered Scribblenauts in English, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, German, Italian, Dutch, U.K.-English, Danish, Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian. We had unique dictionaries for every language, and these word lists were constantly being updated. Version control became a nightmare as we tracked dozens of files for both dictionary files and word lists.
"The system, although severely stressed, made it through, and we shipped all languages. If I could revisit pre-production, we should have either invested in building or licensing a single web tool to manage all the game text."
Level Design From Project Start
Structurally, Scribblenauts is a direct series of levels, in the most straightforward way. That, along with the open-ended nature of the gameplay, meant it was crucial to get going with level design as early as possible:
"We devoted a good chunk of time to designing levels on paper early on in the project. Because Scribblenauts is a game where the designers could use anything they could think of in a level, it was really important to break away from habits in traditional level design and really take advantage of our dictionary.
"While initially our level designs were simple and familiar, the more time we spent designing on paper, the more interesting and outlandish our designs became.
"The amount of time we spent brainstorming, iterating, researching, and challenging each others’ ideas meant we had an increasingly varied landscape to pull from, and from there we chose which levels would go into the final game—to the tune of more than seven-hundred level designs, sampling as much of our dictionary as possible to give players a sense of its scope."
Additional Info
The full postmortem for Scribblenauts explores more of "What Went Right" and "What Went Wrong" during the course of the game's development, and is now available in the November 2009 issue of Game Developer magazine.
The issue also includes a roundup of more than 50 of the year's most interesting industry figures, an analysis of cloud computing, an interview with Sega veteran Naoto Ohshima (Sonic the Hedgehog, Nights into Dreams), and our regular monthly columns on design, art, music, programming, and humor.
Worldwide paper-based subscriptions to Game Developer magazine are currently available at the official magazine website, and the Game Developer Digital version of the issue is also now available, with the site offering six months' and a year's subscriptions, alongside access to back issues and PDF downloads of all issues, all for a reduced price. There is now also an opportunity to buy the digital version of this edition as a single issue. |
http://gty.im/638993754
A Look At How The Lions Gave Up Passing Touchdowns On Defense In 2016.
Lions Struggle To Defend The Air In ’16
As alluded in the defensive rushing touchdowns article, part of the Lions run stopping success was due to just how poor the Lions defended the end zone from quarterbacks in 2016. The Lions ended up the 31st worst team in the league in this category. While the team was ranked in the middle of the pack in terms of yards, the Lions gave up 33 passing touchdowns last season as a defensive unit.
The biggest two reasons for these struggles in 2016 was the Lions inability to create pressure consistently and their poor coverage in the middle of the field. These two issues worked in tandem this past season. If you can create pressure consistently, the negative repercussions of poor coverage are mitigated by incomplete passes and sacks. Or if you can cover effectively for much of the game you can give your defensive line more time to rush the quarterback. But if you cannot do either you can get picked apart in the NFL by experienced quarterbacks.
This was especially hard on the Lions in 2016 as a chance for their first division championship was resting on defeating the Packers in the last game of the regular season. The problem for Detroit was that Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers will make you pay if you give him time to move around the pocket. Rodgers was responsible for eight of the 33 touchdowns given up by Detroit through their two games last season, allowing four in each game. Unfortunately, those points would be too much to overcome and the Lions would lose both games and their division lead after the week 17 matchup.
Looking Forward To The 2017 Season
The Lions front office appears very aware of this issue from last year. They spent several early-mid round draft picks on rookies like linebackers Jarrad Davis and Jalen Reeves-Maybin, and cornerbacks Teez Tabor and Jamal Agnew. Tabor competing on the outside allows cornerback Nevin Lawson to move inside and compete at the nickel corner spot. Davis looks to be a lock at middle linebacker, but keep an eye out for Reeves-Maybin. He fell in the draft because of size and injury concerns not because of lack of ability. If Reeves-Maybin can stay healthy and build up some muscle, he could come in cover on 3rd downs to help this defense get off the field in 2017.
With how poor they were at stopping the passing game in 2016, it’s pretty likely the Lions will see some improvement in this category in 2017. Just how much remains to be seen, but with the new cast of rookies and a couple veteran free agents signed in the front seven, the Lions could be solidly in the middle of the pack next season. That improvement could be the difference between a wild card game and winning the NFC North.
Chat with Zac in our Lions Subreddit and on Twitter @DetLionsScout! |
Joshua () or Jehoshua (Hebrew: יְהוֹשֻׁעַ Yehoshuʿa)[a] is the central figure in the Hebrew Bible's Book of Joshua. According to the books of Exodus, Numbers and Joshua, he was Moses' assistant and became the leader of the Israelite tribes after the death of Moses.[3] His name was Hoshea ( הוֹשֵׁעַ) the son of Nun, of the tribe of Ephraim, but Moses called him Joshua (Numbers 13:16), the name by which he is commonly known. The name is shortened to Yeshua in Nehemiah (Nehemiah 8:17). According to the Bible he was born in Egypt prior to the Exodus.[2]
According to the Hebrew Bible, Joshua was one of the twelve spies of Israel sent by Moses to explore the land of Canaan. In Numbers 13:1–16, and after the death of Moses, he led the Israelite tribes in the conquest of Canaan, and allocated the land to the tribes. According to biblical chronology, Joshua lived some time in the late Bronze Age. According to Joshua 24:29, Joshua died at the age of 110.
Joshua also holds a position of respect among Muslims. According to Islamic tradition, he was, along with Caleb, one of the two believing spies whom Moses had sent to spy the land of Canaan.[4] Muslims also see Joshua as the leader of the Israelites, following the death of Moses. Some Muslims also believe Joshua to be the "attendant" of Moses mentioned in the Quran, before Moses meets Khidr and Joshua plays a significant role in Islamic literature with significant narration in the Hadith, therefore he is a point of study in comparative religion, see Joshua in Islam.
Name [ edit ]
The English name "Joshua" is a rendering of the Hebrew language Yehoshua, meaning "Yahweh is salvation".[5][6] The vocalization of the second name component may be read as Hoshea—the name used in the Torah before Moses added the divine name (Numbers 13:16).[7]
"Jesus" is the English derivative of the Greek transliteration of "Yehoshua" via Latin. In the Septuagint, all instances of the word "Yehoshua" are rendered as "Ἰησοῦς" (Iēsoūs), the closest Greek pronunciation of the Aramaic: ישוע Yeshua, Nehemiah 8:17).[8][9] Thus, in modern Greek, Joshua is called "Jesus son of Naue" (τοῦ Ναυή) to differentiate him from Jesus. This is also true in some Slavic languages following the Eastern Orthodox tradition (e.g. "Иисус Навин", Iisús Navín, in Bulgarian, Serbian and Russian, but not Czech).
Biblical narrative [ edit ]
The Exodus [ edit ]
Moses Blesses Joshua Before the High Priest (watercolor circa 1896–1902 by (watercolor circa 1896–1902 by James Tissot
Joshua was a major figure in the events of the Exodus. He was charged by Moses with selecting and commanding a militia group for their first battle after exiting Egypt, against the Amalekites in Rephidim (Exodus 17:8-16), in which they were victorious.
He later accompanied Moses when he ascended biblical Mount Sinai to commune with God,[10] visualize God's plan for the Israelite tabernacle and receive the Ten Commandments. Joshua was with Moses when he descended from the mountain, heard the Israelites' celebrations around the Golden Calf,[11] and broke the tablets bearing the words of the commandments. Similarly, in the narrative which refers to Moses being able to speak with God in his tent of meeting outside the camp, Joshua is seen as custodian of the tent ('tabernacle of meeting') when Moses returned to the Israelite encampment.[12] However, when Moses returned to the mountain to re-create the tablets recording the Ten Commandments, Joshua was not present, as the biblical text states 'no man shall come up with you'.[13]
Later, Joshua was identified as one of the twelve spies sent by Moses to explore and report on the land of Canaan (Numbers 13:16-17), and only he and Caleb gave an encouraging report, a reward for which would be that only these two of their entire generation would enter the promised land (Numbers 14:22-24).
According to Joshua 1:1-9, God appointed Joshua to succeed Moses as leader of the Israelites along with giving him a blessing of invincibility during his lifetime (Joshua 1:5).[14][15] The first part of the book of Joshua covers the period when he led the conquest of Canaan.
Conquest of Canaan [ edit ]
Joshua Commanding the Sun to Stand Still upon Gibeon by by John Martin
At the Jordan River, the waters parted, as they had for Moses at the Red Sea. The first battle after the crossing of the Jordan was the Battle of Jericho. Joshua led the destruction of Jericho, then moved on to Ai, a small neighboring city to the west. However, they were defeated with thirty-six Israelite deaths. The defeat was attributed to Achan taking an "accursed thing" from Jericho; and was followed by Achan and his family and animals being stoned to death to restore God's favor. Joshua then went to defeat Ai.
The Israelites faced an alliance of five Amorite kings from Jerusalem, Hebron, Jarmuth, Lachish, and Eglon. At Gibeon, Joshua asked Yahweh to cause the sun and moon to stand still, so that he could finish the battle in daylight. This event is most notable because "There has been no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man, for the Lord fought for Israel" (Joshua 10:14). God also fought for the Israelites in this battle, for he hurled huge hailstones from the sky which killed more Canaanites than those which the Israelites slaughtered. From there on, Joshua was able to lead the Israelites to several victories, securing much of the land of Canaan. He presided over the Israelite gatherings at Gilgal and Shiloh which allocated land to the tribes of Israel (Joshua 14:1-5 and 18:1-10), and the Israelites rewarded him with the Ephraimite city of Timnath-heres or Timnath-serah, where he settled (Joshua 19:50).
Death [ edit ]
When he was "old and well advanced in years",[16] Joshua convened the elders and chiefs of the Israelites and exhorted them to have no fellowship with the native population, because it could lead them to be unfaithful to God.[17] At a general assembly of the clans at Shechem, he took leave of the people, admonishing them to be loyal to their God, who had been so mightily manifested in the midst of them. As a witness of their promise to serve God, Joshua set up a great stone under an oak by the sanctuary of God. Soon afterward he died, at the age of 110, and was buried at Timnath-heres, in the hill country of Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash.[18]
Historicity [ edit ]
The prevailing scholarly view is that Joshua is not a factual account of historical events.[19] The apparent setting of Joshua is the 13th century BCE,[19] a time of widespread city-destruction, but with a few exceptions (Hazor, Lachish) the destroyed cities are not the ones the Bible associates with Joshua, and the ones it does associate with him show little or no sign of even being occupied at the time.[20] Archaeologists generally agree that the Israelites had Canaanite origins: the culture of the earliest Israelite settlements is Canaanite, their cult-objects are those of the Canaanite god El, the pottery remains are in the Canaanite tradition, and the alphabet used is early Canaanite. Almost the sole marker distinguishing the "Israelite" villages from Canaanite sites is an absence of pig bones, although whether even this is an ethnic marker or is due to other factors remains a matter of dispute.
There is a consensus that the Joshua traditions in the Pentateuch are secondary additions. The spy story of Numbers 13–14; Deut. 1:34–7, in an earlier form only mentioned Caleb. E. Meyer and G. Hoelscher deny Joshua's existence as a historical reality and conclude that he is the legendary hero of a Josephite clan.[22]
Carolyn Pressler, in her 2002 commentary for the Westminster Bible Companion series, suggests that readers of the Book of Joshua should give priority to its theological message ("what passages teach about God") and be aware of what these would have meant to audiences in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE.[23] Richard Nelson explains, "The needs of the centralised monarchy favoured a single story of origins combining old traditions of an exodus from Egypt, belief in a national god as 'divine warrior,' and explanations for ruined cities, social stratification and ethnic groups, and contemporary tribes."[24]
Authorship of the biblical Joshua narrative is ascribed to Joshua himself by Bava Batra 15a (Talmud) and early church fathers, but in 1943 Martin Noth published an argument that behind Joshua and other books was a unified "Deuteronomistic history", composed in the early part of the Babylonian captivity (6th century BCE). Most scholars today believe in some such composite, containing the epic history of the premonarchical period.[25]
Internal evidence of the book of Joshua, and the repeated use of the phrase 'to this day' suggests that the events that it recounts took place some time before they were recorded.[26]
The first record of the name Israel occurs in the Merneptah stele, erected for Egyptian Pharaoh Merneptah c. 1209 BCE, "Israel is laid waste and his seed is not."[27] William Dever sees this "Israel" in the central highlands as a cultural and probably political entity, well enough established to be perceived by the Egyptians as a possible challenge to their hegemony, but an ethnic group rather than an organised state.[28]
The number of villages in the highlands increased to more than 300 by the end of Iron Age I[29] (more and larger in the north), with the settled population rising from 20,000 in the twelfth century to 40,000 in the eleventh.[30] The villagers probably shared the highlands with other communities such as pastoral nomads, but only villagers left sufficient remains to determine their settlement patterns.[31] Archaeologists and historians see more continuity than discontinuity between these highland settlements and the preceding Late Bronze Age Canaanite culture.[32] Certain features, such as ceramic repertoire and agrarian settlement plans, have been said to be distinctives of highland sites,[33] and collar-rimmed jars and four-roomed houses have been said to be intrinsically "Israelite", but have also been said to belong to a commonly shared culture throughout Iron I Canaan.[34] While some archaeologists interpret the absence of pig bones from the highland sites as an indicator of ethnicity,[35] this is not certain.[36] Villages had populations of up to 300 or 400,[30][37] which lived by farming and herding and were largely self-sufficient;[38] economic interchange was prevalent.[39]
According to Ann E. Killebrew, "Most scholars today accept that the majority of the conquest narratives in the book of Joshua are devoid of historical reality".[40][41][42][43]
The question of the date and degrees of conquest and/or assimilation of the indigenous population is uncertain, as academics and archaeologists differ in their interpretation of the archaeological and other evidence.[44]
Views [ edit ]
Joshua and the Israelite people, Karolingischer Buchmaler, c. 840
In rabbinical literature [ edit ]
In rabbinic literature Joshua is regarded as a faithful, humble, deserving, wise man. Biblical verses illustrative of these qualities and of their reward are applied to him. "He that waits on his master shall be honored" (Pro. xxvii. 18) is construed as a reference to Joshua (Midrash Numbers Rabbah xii.), as is also the first part of the same verse, "Whoso keepes the fig-tree shall eat the fruit thereof" (Midrash Yalk., Josh. 2; Numbers Rabbah xii. 21). That "honor shall uphold the humble in spirit" (Pro. xxix. 23) is proved by Joshua's victory over Amalek (Midrash Numbers Rabbah xiii). Not the sons of Moses—as Moses himself had expected—but Joshua was appointed successor to the son of Amram (Midrash Numbers Rabbah xii). Moses was shown how Joshua reproved that Othniel (Yalḳ., Num. 776).
God would speak to Moses face to face, like someone would speak to his friend. Then he would return to the camp. But his attendant, Joshua the son of Nun, a young man, would not leave the tent. Joshua never moved from the tent.[45] Didn't Joshua leave the tent to eat, sleep or attend to his needs? This praise shows that Joshua had complete faith in Moses, the Tzaddik. One who has this faith is cognizant of the tzaddik in everything he does; he remains steadfastly with the tzaddik whatever he does.[46]
In Christianity [ edit ]
Most modern Bibles translate Hebrews 4:8–10 to identify Jesus as a better Joshua, as Joshua led Israel into the rest of Canaan, but Jesus leads the people of God into "God's rest". Among the early Church Fathers, Joshua is considered a type of Jesus Christ.[47]
In Islam [ edit ]
Joshua (Arabic: أو يُوشَعُ بْنُ نُونٍ jooʃʌ' bin noon) is not mentioned by name in the Quran, but his name appears in other Islamic literature. In the Quranic account of the conquest of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb are referenced, but not named, as two "Allah-fearing men", on whom God "had bestowed His grace".[48]
They said, "Moses, there is a fearsome people in this land. We will not go there until they leave. If they leave, then we will enter." Yet the two men whom God had blessed among those who were afraid said, "Go in to them through the gate and when you go in you will overcome them. If you are true believers, put your trust in God. Qur'an, sura 5 (Al-Ma'ida), ayah 22–23, Haleem translation[49]
Joshua was regarded by some classical scholars as the prophetic successor to Moses (موسى).[50] Tabari relates in his History of the Prophets and Kings that Joshua was one of the twelve spies and Muslim scholars believe that the two believing spies referred to in the Qur’ān are Joshua and Caleb. Joshua was exceptional among the Israelites for being one of the few faithful followers of Allah.
Joshua is further mentioned in Islamic literature, and significant events from his Muslim narratives include the crossing of the Jordan river and the conquest of Bait al-Maqdis.[51]
The traditional Muslim commentary al-Julalayn says, "Ahmad [b. Hanbal] reported in his Musnad, the [following] hadīth, 'The sun was never detained for any human, except for Joshua during those days in which he marched towards the Holy House [of Jerusalem]'."[52]
Muslim literature includes traditions of Joshua not found in the Hebrew Bible. Joshua is credited with being present at Moses's death and literature records that Moses's garments were with Joshua at the time of his departure.[53] In Sahih Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, Joshua is mentioned as Yusha' bin Nun and is the attendant to Moses during his meeting with Khidr.[54][55][56]
Ali ibn Abi Talib, the cousin of Muhammad, was asked about the prophets that had special names. He narrates in Hadith that Yusha' ibn Nun was known as Dhu al-Kifl.[57]
Joshua is believed by some Muslims to be buried on Joshua's Hill in the Beykoz district of Istanbul.[58] Alternative traditional sites for his tomb are situated in Israel (the Shia shrine at Al-Nabi Yusha'), Jordan (An-Nabi Yusha’ bin Noon, a Sunni shrine near the city of Al-Salt[59][60]), Iran (Historical cemetery of Takht e Foolad in Esfahan)[citation needed] and Iraq (the Nabi Yusha' shrine of Baghdad[59]).
In art and literature [ edit ]
Yahrtzeit [ edit ]
The annual commemoration of Joshua's yahrtzeit (the anniversary of his death) is marked on the 26th of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. Thousands make the pilgrimage to the Tomb of Joshua in Kifl Haris on the preceding night.
Yom HaAliyah [ edit ]
Yom HaAliyah (Aliyah Day) (Hebrew: יום העלייה) is an Israeli national holiday celebrated annually on the tenth of the Hebrew month of Nisan to commemorate Joshua having led the Israelites across the Jordan River into the Land of Israel while carrying the Ark of the Covenant.
Joshua tree and Joshua's blind snake [ edit ]
Legend has it that Mormon pioneers in the United States first referred to the yucca brevifolia agave plant as the Joshua tree because its branches reminded them of Joshua stretching his arms upward in supplication, guiding the travelers westward.[62]
Joshua is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of snake, Joshua's blind snake (Trilepida joshuai ), the holotype of which was collected at Jericó, Antioquia, Colombia.[63]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
References [ edit ] |
These days it's not easy for a legal threat to distinguish itself. There are so many of them, and it's common from them to be bumptious and ignorant.
That's why I have to tip my hat to Stuart Gibson, an attorney at the Australian firm Mills Oakley. He has risen above the pack.
Mr. Gibson charges heedlessly into a crowded subgenre: threatening people for merely talking about you. The genesis of his bluster is a 2012 post at Techdirt discussing an Australian court victory against Google by one Milroad Trkluja, who was displeased that Google searches of his name brought up pictures of an underworld figure. That's not so bad; Googling my name brings up pictures of Jabba the Hutt cosplay. Anyway, Techdirt's article criticized the decision but made it perfectly clear that Mr. Trkulja was not, in fact, a gangster, and that his image only got connected with a gangster because he had the misfortune to be an innocent bystander in a shooting.
More than three years later, Trkulja sent Techdirt and Google a bizarrely entertaining legal threat complaining about a comment on the 2012 story that suggested that he was the sort of "gangster" who uses courts rather than guns. Trkulja demanded money, the deletion of the offending comment and anything ever written about him, and to block Techdirt. This was amusing and noteworthy; it's exactly the sort of flailing threat Techdirt writes about all the time.
Enter Mills Oakley attorney Stuart Gibson. He sent Techdirt a threat that, while much shorter and less floridly pro-se nutty than Trukulja's, was in its own way just as ridiculous.
This is the rotten core of it:
The matter that you have published conveys false and defamatory meanings including (but not limited to) the following:
Our client is a gangster; That our client by virtue of his legal claims is incompetent and unfit to be a litigant; That our client by virtue of his legal claims is a ridiculous litigant; That our client is a criminal and a participant in organised crime; That our client is unfit to be a litigant None of these meanings is defensible. Our client is not a criminal and has never been a gangster nor associated with such persons. Accordingly there is no factual basis for the imputations published.
This is entertainingly preposterous. Techdirt never suggested Trkulja is a gangster; a commenter jokingly suggested he is a litigation gangster. Techdirt's suggestion that Trkulja's legal threat is ridiculous (which Gibson spins as "unfit to be a litigant") is a classic case of opinion based on disclosed facts — the fact in this case being Trkulja's nutty legal threat.
Gibson finishes with bluster about how his firm has enforced Australian judgments against other companies, about how American law will not protect Techdirt, about how Techdirt's free speech defense is "absolute nonsense," and so forth.
Gibson is, of course, utterly full of shit. This is exactly the sort of bullying threat that the SPEECH Act, 28 U.S.C. section 41202, is designed to render impotent. Australia is beautiful and its people are lovely and its laws have many things to recommend them but, with respect to protection of free speech, it is a jurisprudential shithole. Congress passed the SPEECH Act to ensure that law-thugs like Mr. Gibson could not silence speech by obtaining defamation judgments under legal regimes that lack adequate protections for free speech. Mr. Gibson is free to get an Australian judgment against Techdirt — indeed, Australian courts are popular with libel tourists and folks with ambitions to control speech worldwide. But unless Techdirt has assets in Australia, that judgment will be worthless.
Under the SPEECH Act, American courts won't recognize and enforce foreign defamation judgments unless the party seeking to enforce them carries the burden of proving that (1) the foreign court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over the defendant satisfied American concepts of due process; (2) the foreign court's ruling complied with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which says that web sites can't be held liable for defamation for comments left by third parties; and (3) either the foreign court offers as much free speech protection as American courts, or American courts would have reached the same result on the defamation claim. Stuart Gibson's threats on behalf of Mr. Trkulja fail all three of those tests. Australia has no plausible personal jurisdiction claim over Techdirt; Gibson and Trkulja are trying to hold Techdirt responsible for a comment left by a third party; and Trkulja's and Gibson's silly claims would never stand up to First Amendment scrutiny. Among other things, Australia apparently treats truth as a defense, requiring defamation defendants to prove that their statements were true, rather than requiring the plaintiff to prove that they were false. That, standing alone, is enough to fail the SPEECH Act test. Trout Point Lodge, Ltd. v. Handshoe, 729 F.3d 481, 489 (5th Cir. 2013) (Canadian judgment was not enforceable under SPEECH Act because, among other things, it placed burden of proving truth on defendant). Moreover, Mr. Gibson's suggestion that Techdirt can't make fun of Trkulja for writing a very silly threat is sheer idiocy, and I suspect would be even under Australian law.
One can imagine why Mr. Trkulja would act this way — he's an angry litigant, not an attorney. But why would Stuart Gibson, who appears to be a real-life lawyer at a reputable law firm, act this way?
There are several possibilities. One is that Stuart Gibson is willfully ignorant of relevant American law. This theory has some appeal, especially when you consider that this is the entirety of his analysis of the SPEECH Act in his threat to Techdirt:
You are not protected by the Speech Act.
Another possibility is that Stuart Gibson knows the relevant law but is hoping that Techdirt doesn't — that he hopes that Techdirt is ignorant or easily intimidated enough to yield to legally meritless demands. This merely demonstrates another form of willful ignorance; the briefest investigation of Techdirt's history would reveal that it stands up to stupid legal threats all the time, and in fact publicly mocks them. If this is the case, then Gibson has failed to follow one of the core rules of writing an effective and non-own-foot-shooty takedown letter: he didn't investigate his target.
A third possibility is that Stuart Gibson is a hotheaded buffoon incapable — whatever he knows or doesn't know — of maintaining communications discipline. This explanation, too, has a certain appeal. I wrote Mr. Gibson seeking comment and some of his responses suggested a failure of self-control:
Ken
What you can say is that I have challenged Mike to accept Service of Proceedings and to espouse his theories in Court here.I have been trying to effect Service on him.
We are at this time trying to serve him/it.
I do not think it understands Australian Defamation Law.
We have no Free Speech law in this country.
Ken
What are you doing writing for this trashsite
And so forth.1
There is a type of gormless lawyer who becomes incensed when his or her idiotic demands are not met with immediate compliance; Mr. Gibson appears to be such a buffoon.
Finally, it's possible that Mr. Gibson is actually very clever and is just setting this matter up for Mr. Trkulja for another Australian lawsuit against Google seeking damages for the existence of websites that do not fluff him. Lord knows such train wrecks are possible there.
Mr. Gibson and Mr. Trkulja perform useful service: they illustrate exactly why Congress was right to pass the SPEECH Act, and exactly why we should be thankful for America's unusually broad and robust defense of free speech. Do you want people like Stuart Gibson dictating what you can say and whom you may ridicule? After all, Mr. Gibson is the sort of lawyer who says "we have no Free Speech law in this country" — and is happy about it, because it allows him to act like . . . well, like a gangster.
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In a recent paper published in Physical Review Letters (PRL), one of the top physics journals, Jérôme Duplat and Emmanuel Villermaux developed a method to generate centimeter-sized vacuum bubbles in water with miniature laser-driven explosions, and observed the flash of light produced as the bubble collapsed, a not-fully-understood phenomenon known as sonoluminescence. They measured the temperature inside the bubble, spectroscopically, and found it was upwards of 20,000 Kelvin, hotter than any chemical reaction.
Scientific interest in bubbles goes back to Leonardo da Vinci. In the early 20th century the physics of bubbles was investigated more rigorously, because bubbles generated by propellers were causing damage to them. They are also used as contrast agents during medical ultrasound, because they oscillate under an external acoustic field and re-radiate incident sound, which can make it easier to image inside the body. The physics of bubbles is really interesting, but I will only summarize one important tenet: if the pressure inside the bubble is greater than the pressure in the fluid, the bubble grows; if it is lesser, it shrinks.
Sonoluminesence was discovered serendipitously in 1934 during an attempt to use sound waves to speed up photographic development. In 1989 the technology was developed to study it one bubble at a time, by trapping the bubble at the node of an acoustic standing wave. The phenomenon is not fully understood, both experimentally and theoretically. On the experimental side, it has been a matter of debate how hot it actually gets, but if the spectrum is both thermal and visible, it must be in the thousands of degrees. There was a controversial claim that it was hot enough to ignite nuclear fusion, which was met with scepticism. On the theoretical side, it is not known exactly what mechanism produces this light. It may be that the gas inside the bubble is simply heating up as it is compressed, but calculations from the ideal gas law don’t give high enough temperatures. It could be that the rapid acceleration of the wall induces atomic or molecular transitions that give off light, or that the gas becomes ionized into plasma, or it could be bremsstrahlung. The bubbles tend to be so small and so fast that it’s hard to get good spectroscopic information.
The innovation of Duplat and Villermaux was a way to make the bubbles bigger and emptier, by starting them off with a small explosion. Starting with bubbles containing hydrogen and oxygen gas individually, they blast the bubble with a laser to ignite the combustion, driving the expansion of the bubble. The bubble is now full of water vapour, and the molecules get adsorbed into the liquid water at the bubble wall, leaving a mostly-empty centimeter-sized cavity. Now there is a large empty cavity in the water, so the fluid rushes back into it, collapsing it. What vapour that does remain, sonoluminesces. The journal has videos from the experiments, and they are awesome. I particularly recommend video1.avi and MovieS2.mov.
After the laser blast, the flame inside the bubble propagates at 80 meters per second for about 0.1 milliseconds, leaving vapour. The vapour then flies towards the bubble wall at about 1000 meters per second for about 0.01 milliseconds, getting sucked back into its liquid form at the wall. At this point, the pressure inside the bubble is at around a Pascal, (very low, that’s 0.00001 atmospheres), and about 4400 Kelvin. This is where the bubble physics start: it grows at an initial speed of about 10 meters per second for about a millisecond, before collapsing. As it collapses it emits a flash of sonoluminescence, which is recorded through a diffraction grating (to split it into different wavelengths) by a digital camera. Based on the amount of the emitted light, they conclude that the temperature inside the bubble as it collapses is about 26,000 Kelvin.
The novelty of this experiment is not the spectral measurement, but the ability to produce sonoluminescence in such large, empty bubbles. One of the factors that determines the strength of the sonoluminescence effect is the ratio of the bubble’s minimum and maximum size. Not only do they start bigger in this experiment, but they can reach a smaller size because they are so empty, optimizing this ratio. The fact that bigger bubbles take longer to collapse means that it will be easier to watch it happen in real time. In the final paragraph of the paper, they explain that this can be used in the future to better study sonoluminesence.
To summarize, the results of this paper are not novel but the methods are. And I think generating a bubble by igniting a tiny hydrogen fire with a laser pulse is a really awesome thing to do.
*Source of that gif is a movie from the supplemental material of http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.115.094501
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Murdoch's Pirates by Neil Chenoweth. Published by Allen & Unwin, November 2012. The competition is for control of a small item costing $2 - the credit card-size smart cards that give access to satellite pay TV. The security of those cards is the key to billions of dollars in pay TV revenues. Since the inception of pay television, independent hackers and organised pirate rings have repeatedly broken the codes to provide unauthorised access via a black market in forged smart cards. Naturally, investors in pay TV have fought back to defend their revenues. News Corporation, planning a global satellite-television empire, acquired its own card security development company - News Datacom (later NDS). It was based in Israel and employed mainly former Israeli military and intelligence operatives. Its first chief executive turned out to be a convicted American swindler on the run from US authorities, but the staff were expert in their fields. Their primary task was to develop the DataCrypt system for New Corporation's pay TV systems. But as Chenoweth writes, NDS also ran intelligence operations against pirate card makers and against New Corporation's competitors. They infiltrated the internet chatrooms where hackers would boast about their achievements, developed contacts and recruited agents. They employed former police detectives and intelligence operatives for many nationalities, including a former head of Scotland Yard's criminal intelligence bureau. These agents used their contacts with state agencies, bugged phones, burgled homes, set traps and employed every device familiar to readers of crime fiction - with apparent disdain for the law. As in the high times of maritime piracy, one man's pirate would be another man's privateer. In this shady world, hackers and agents were often on police watch lists of one kind or another, so they were flown around the world with false passports. The senior NDS officer responsible for undercover operations in Australia and East Asia was the wife of an Israeli diplomat, based in Taiwan. Her job was to protect the interests of News Corporation.
Whenever someone was caught out or things got sticky, the massive political, legal and public relations resources of News Corporation could usually protect them. If an operation was exposed too blatantly, agents would be jettisoned and denied. In one case, Chenoweth writes that News pretended to be suing a hacker who was, in fact, on their own payroll. The most creative hackers were often difficult individuals. One seems to have been murdered, KGB-style, in a Berlin park, after eastern European gangsters concluded he was a threat to their lucrative piracy business. Another on the NDS payroll was arrested in a Bulgarian bar after shooting another man in a drunken rage. By Chenoweth's account, this activity went well beyond defending a legitimate business against criminal attack. News Corporation was accused of using its smart card ''security'' operations to damage its competitors. News wanted its NDS card system to be the standard everywhere, but there were several European and American competitors in the smart card business. When big contracts were coming up for review, there were suspiciously frequent public releases of codes to crack the cards of NDS's competitors. The main victims of these sabotage releases were the American services DIRECTV and EchoStar, and the French Canal Plus. These corporations established their own intelligence operations to find out what was going on and for several years there was running underground warfare. In the heat of it, some star European and American hackers seem to have been double agents, triple agents, or simply playing all sides for as long as they could. At the corporate level, News Corporation was trying to buy a 30 per cent shareholding in DIRECTV that was held by General Motors. NDS provided the smart cards to DIRECTV and card piracy was a factor in the price of those shares. Chenoweth reports evidence that one of NDS's prize hackers had developed a cure-all solution for piracy on their current cards, but NDS did not release that code during the time that News Corporation had an interest in keeping DIRECTV share prices low.
Eventually Canal Plus and the US Echostar system sued NDS for sabotaging the security of their competitor's codes. The claims were for hundreds of millions in lost revenue, let alone any share price implications or criminal liability. News Corporation had 20 lawyers in the California court-room, the plaintiffs had three. Despite compelling evidence, and all indications that the judge was convinced by it, NDS was found guilty of only a minor misdemeanour with a $45 penalty. Even the judge's costs award against NDS was overturned by an appeals court of California's notoriously partisan, elected judiciary. By this time, News Corporation was a significant political asset of the Republican Party. The Australian Financial Review journalist Neil Chenoweth has been a hound of News Corporation for many years. His investigative work on this story, over more than four years, has accumulated extraordinary detail from across the globe. We get potted biographies and character sketches of most of the key characters. I'm not sure we needed to know the names of the two dogs who sniffed a suspicious package at a critical moment in a Texas parcel depot - but it proves Chenoweth was thorough. Chenoweth notes the legal hazards of investigating News Corporation, whose normal approach to litigation he describes as ''thermonuclear''. At many points in this story, the threat of massive legal costs seems to have been enough to extinguish open challenges to News Corporation's version of the truth. This story is full of personal drama, colourful identities, and issues of high principle. Many episodes are presented in a cinematic present tense, but the large caste and complex plot would challenge any screenwriter. Chenoweth concludes with a number of serious questions about accountability of globalised corporations. I wonder who will dare to make the movie. Richard Thwaites was working on broadcasting policy issues while Australia's pay television system was being introduced. |
The 2014 AFL Grand Final is upon us. Reigning Premiers Hawthorn take on the highly fancied Sydney Swans at the MCG in Melbourne on Saturday afternoon. We hope you can watch the match wherever you are in the world, one way or another.
The international broadcast details for the match and highlights packages can be seen below.
Region Network AFL Game Day The Pre Game Show Grand Final - Hawthorn vs Sydney Premiership Party Highlights Asia Australia Network - - 27/9 @ 1100 HKT (LIVE) - 30/9 @ 2330 HKT Pacific Australia Network - - 27/9 @ 1500 FJT (LIVE) - 1/10 @ 0330 FJT India Australia Network - - 27/9 @ 0830 IST (LIVE) - 30/9 @ 2100 IST UK & Ireland ESPN BT Sport - - 27/9 @ 0400 BST (LIVE) - 30/9 @ 2230 BST Caribbean ESPN - - 26/9 @ 2300 EST (LIVE) - 3/10 @ 1400 EST Europe Eurosport 2 - - 27/9 @ 0630 CET (LIVE) - - UK & Ireland Eurosport 2 - - 30/9 @ 2230 BST (Delay) - - Asia Eurosport 2 - - 27/9 @ 16:45 HKT (Delay) - - USA Fox Soccer Plus/Fox Sports 2 - - 27/9 @ 2300 ET (LIVE) - 29/9 @ 1700 ET Middle East Orbit Showtime Network 27/9 @ 0200 KSA (LIVE) 27/9 @ 0400 KSA (LIVE) 27/9 @ 0600 KSA (LIVE) - 29/9 @ 2000 KSA Worldwide (excl. Aust) OTLSM - Boats and Cruises - - 27/9 @ 0430 GMT (LIVE) - - New Zealand Sky Sports - - 27/9 @ 1500 NZT (LIVE) - 30/9 @ 1730 NZT New Zealand Sommet Sports 27/9 @ 1100 NZT (LIVE) 27/9 @ 1300 NZT (LIVE) 27/9 @ 1500 NZT (LIVE) 27/9 @ 2000NZT (LIVE) 1/10 @ 1930NZT Africa Supersport - - 27/9 @ 0625 CAT (LIVE) - 29/9 @ 1730 CAT Canada TSN2 - - 27/9 @ 2300 USET (LIVE) - TSN.ca Latin America Viva Sports - - 1/10 @ 1830 MST (Delay) - - Worldwide WatchAFL.com.au - - 27/9 @ 0430 GMT (LIVE) - -
These details are in provided in good faith, World Footy News takes no responsibility for any changes or errors in the above table. All broadcasts are subject to change, please check with your local broadcaster for the most up to date schedule. |
Wasn't it fun when we were kids to doodle on restaurants' paper placements with crayons? Well, McDonald's has introduced a high-tech, musical version of that sort of play with McTrax—a snazzy placemat that acts like a little music production station.
TBWA\Neboko in the Netherlands created McTrax. The placemat, developed with This Page Amsterdam, uses conductive ink, a small battery and a thin circuit board with 26 digital touchpoints. You put you phone on it, download an app and make music with in-house produced audio loops, synths and musical effects. You can also record your own voice.
See it in action here:
"The paper of the placemat is what makes this technique so innovative," TBWA creative technologist Radha Pleijsant and digital design lead Jan Jesse Bakker said in a statement. "The phone merely acts as the speaker and screen, which is easily connected to the placemat via Bluetooth, making the sure you can hear the music on your speakers."
"This placemat brings technique, engagement and entertainment together making it 'experience advertising,' " added chief creative officer Darre van Dijk.
"This is exactly what McDonald's is; a place to have fun and experience great moments, for everyone," said Erwin Dito, director of marketing, communications and consumer insight for McDonald's Netherlands.
CREDITS
Agency: TBWA\NEBOKO
Concept: Jan Jesse Bakker, Yacco Vijn, Radha Pleijsant
Client: McDonald's Nederland
App en tech development: This Page Amsterdam
Placemat development: Novalia, Londen
Programmed beats: Darius Dante |
Author's note:
Posting this message twice because it's important.
I have decided to give a name to the planet that the Hammond spectre factory is built upon. As it was a referenced location in the game – there's an actual map there – but the name of the planet isn't mentioned, I wasn't going to name it. But calling it "the planet" is boring. So, from now on, the planet shall be called "Hephaestus".
Similarly, the sun that Hephaestus orbits is now named Solhephaestus, following my conventions with naming planets and stars.
Ashley Stone switched to team D's private channel.
"Team D. Time to face the music."
Her fingers flew across the keyboard in front of her.
"You've got to find a shuttle. I'm searching the planetary infonet now... 92 hits. Jaggerjack, you there?"
"Hearing you loud and clear."
"Good. I've spotted a place on the other side of Alpha – nice and far away from the spaceport so you guys can cover your tracks. You're off to Samel's Shuttle Emporium. 'Reliable shuttles, low prices, no questions asked'. Get your team over there by 1300 hours tomorrow, it's getting late today. Keep in mind that the days are shorter here."
The enormous orange sun hovering in the thin sky served to remind the team that this was another planet.
"Copy that, Stone. Can you give me more precise coordinates?"
"Translating the address into coordinates – 31 degrees, 30 minutes, 53.1072 seconds north, 6 degrees, 25 minutes, 56.9820 seconds west. I'm adding a waypoint in your locator now."
"Waypoint received. Oh, wow. That's a couple of hours' walk."
"And I'm afraid you're going to have to walk it. We can't afford to hire or buy a transport."
"It'll be fine, I'm sure we'll manage. We'll find a merchant's inn for tonight and head off to Sorian by tomorrow."
"Gotcha. Good luck, Team D."
Stone moved to the other teams.
"Misha, are you guys good?"
"We're fine, Mission Specialist."
"Leader of team B, Pilot Bruce. We've located some unmarked probes you could purchase at a market not far from Alpha. Patching you the coordinates now.
"E-team. You've got the shopping list?"
"Copy that, Ms. Stone," replied the Pilot George, leader of team E. "We'll be getting some rest tonight before going out to the markets tomorrow."
"Sounds good. Good luck."
Stone sighed, relieved. All was well on the desert planet below.
"All teams are go, Captain."
Captain Soryuu glanced sideways at her Vice-Captain, John Roberts. He nodded at her, as if to say, it's your ship now. She opened her mouth.
"We wait until morning. Then we begin."
"Commander, we will reach the bearing you specified in five minutes. This is your last chance to cancel or we will jump to Solhephaestus. Are you sure this is a good idea?"
"Yes, Admiral. Commence the jump to Solhephaestus. Arrive 1.2 billion metres from the surface."
"Commander, that is too close. We'll melt after a few minutes. May I suggest we jump to a point 2 billion metres away?"
"Spyglass."
"Trust is an interesting exercise," the AI mused. "Very well then, Commander. You understand that you will not be paid if you melt? And that Solhephaestus is in the opposite direction from Outpost 207?"
"Admiral. Please."
Spyglass switched his broadcasting mode to the entire fleet. "Attention, all personnel. Ensure your ships are in position behind the IMS Hercules. We will be jumping to Solhephaestus in thirty seconds.
T minus 29. 28. 27. 26. 25."
"All ships are in position!" called the chief of navigation. "They're ready to ride our jump wake!"
"15. 14. 13. 12. 11. T minus 10. Preparing Jump Drive."
"Let's do this, Spyglass," whispered Blisk. "We're going to show this asshole who's boss."
"6. 5. Initiating jump sequence in three, two, one, mark."
Four large flywheels deep within the Hercules had been drawing energy from the Hercules' tritium reactor over the past 10 minutes and had now achieved peak velocity. Each flywheel suddenly stopped, dumping their entire reserves of stored kinetic energy into two particle accelerators. The energy formed two black holes within the bounds of the Hercules' jump drive.
At the same time, the three Hammond MK. 31 large mass drivers that were the Hercules' engines flared brilliant blue, firing propellant behind it to accelerate the ship forward at a rate of 30 metres per second, slamming the entire crew back into their seats and briefly forcing the air out of their lungs.
As the space in front of them began to compress by 5,000 times the light entering the Hercules' side cameras began to speed up, bending like light through water. Solhephaestus – directly in front of the jump drives' area of influence – stayed the same, while the rest of space seemed to converge ahead of them.
"Hang on tight," grunted Blisk to the bridge crew, and then they were gone.
"Captain, we are receiving a hailing signal from Venice 3," called a Communications technician. "Do you want to take it?"
Once again, Soryuu glanced at Roberts.
"Your call, Sir."
"You're Captain now, Ma'am. I would advise you take it, but ultimately the decision is yours."
"Very well. Put them through."
A man appeared on the display screen in front of Soryuu. Heavily tanned, curly black hair, brown eyes, bony cheeks – and luscious silky robes flowing from his shoulders.
"Good afternoon, travellers!" the man grinned. "I am Lucian Jzaque, leading trader of Alpha's markets. To whom do I owe the pleasure?"
"Yuuki 'Nina' Soryuu of the TKY Shikinami. Have you business with us?"
"Perhaps." Lucian's smile never fell from his face. "I noticed your ship jumping in from New Tokyo a few hours ago – I must say, it is enormous! You're not thinking of selling, are you?"
"No thank you, perhaps another time. She has served us well so far and I'd hate to give her away."
"Very well then." He rubbed his hands together. "Well, I was wondering exactly what are you planning on buying or selling? I'd love to be of assistance."
I'm sure you would, thought Soryuu. "Well," she mused, "We've already sent some traders down to the surface -"
"Excellent!" Lucian quickly interrupted. "Send them to me! I will hook them up with whatever they need!"
"Well they'll be looking for various knicks and knacks tomorrow – fuel, of course -"
"I happen to have the largest fuel depot in town!" Lucian added.
"- and shuttles, communication pods, tritium – all sorts of things. For now, they're just looking for accommodation before they go off to the market."
"Well, tell them to come stay with me!" Lucian exclaimed, happily. "I'm used to traders staying at my mansion, we have plenty of beds for guests. I can arrange everything for you. Let me make your visit to Venice 3 as comfortable as possible. What do you say?"
"Can you excuse me for a moment, Mr. Jzaque? I'd like to discuss this with the rest of the bridge."
"Absolutely." He began to finger a ring.
"Communications, mute microphone and disable camera feed," commanded Soryuu.
She turned to Roberts. "Vice-Captain. What do you think?"
"For starters," began Roberts, "It would be unwise to trust everyone on Venice 3. That said..."
"Well?"
"I've heard of people like him before. 'Trader-hoarders', they're called.
What he'll have done is launched a huge amount of communication drones into orbit around Solvenice and told them to alert him if a large ship was approaching Venice 3. The moment he saw us he would have gone straight to the bank, asked for the biggest loan they'd give him and then hired out a large mansion and some fancy clothes to make himself look like a millionaire. By the time we arrived at Venice 3 he'd be desperately broadcasting – just like every other trader-hoarder on Venice 3 – for our attention, hoping that we'd talk to him first. He says he's the leading trader of Alpha's markets – hence the mansion, clothes, and 'the largest fuel depot in town', the last of which is likely complete bull. What he wants now is for us to send our traders to stay at his mansion. We rock up, he acts all friendly, asks what we're selling or buying, and makes sure we don't ever see the markets of Venice 3. He, claiming to be 'the leading trader of Alpha's markets, will then buy whatever we want to buy, add his own price markup, and sell it to us. He'll also buy our goods at less than what they should be and then sell them to the markets at full price. By making sure we never get to see Alpha's markets, he makes sure he makes an enormous profit off us."
"So we shouldn't go with him?"
"Depends on the markup he adds. I reckon we send team E to him and send the other teams for a quick stroll through the market. We compare the prices, and, if he's not screwing us over too badly, we leave team E there, safe within his hired mansion."
"Very well then. Activate microphone and camera feed.
I'm back, Lucian."
He dropped his ring. "Have you made your decision?" He wrung his hands nervously.
"We're going to send our traders over. Can you give us your address?"
"Yes! Uhh..." he fumbled around for a piece of paper. "Ready? 31 degrees, 31 minutes, 56.4 seconds north, 6 degrees, 23 minutes, 16.8 seconds west."
"Cool. Can you be ready for them in an hour?"
"Absolutely!" Lucian almost screamed with excitement. "Come as soon as possible!"
The call ended.
"Overwatch. Focus our long range cameras on his address. I want orbital imagery, I want to know that team E will be safe. Search the infonet too."
Soryuu turned to Roberts, raised an eyebrow. "I don't know what you were talking about, Vice-Captain. That man was obviously a trader of very high stature."
"Disengaging jump drives," Spyglass called. "All ships, confirm jump success."
"IMS Pillar of Winter successfully jumped, Admiral!" broadcast the first cruiser.
"IMS Strongarm successfully jumped, Admiral!"
"This is the Rorschach, reporting in."
"IMS Dreamgate, reporting in."
"Logistics cruiser IMS Queen of hearts, here."
"Logistics cruiser IMS Queen of spaces. We made it."
"Logi cruiser Queen of clubs, jump successful."
"Confirming successful jump drive disengage from the Queen of diamonds."
"All four carriers have jumped successfully. All four logistics cruisers have jumped successfully. Sensor readouts indicate that all destroyers, frigates and corvettes have jumped successfully." Spyglass turned to Blisk. "Commander, we are too close to Solhephaestus. We can't vent our heat fast enough. I hope you have a plan."
"We'll start by angling the Hercules so that our thrusters are pointed directly at Solhephaestus. The thrusters should deflect some of the radiation."
"Commander, I am having difficulty understanding your actions. You ask me to trust you, then you make the fleet dangerously close to Solhephaestus? Please explain yourself."
"Well." Blisk grinned. "Graves has set up camp between Hephaestus and Outpost 207, right?"
"Yes. I was planning on breaching their blockade with a pincer formation."
"Admiral, Graves invented the pincer formation. And he knows you. I'd bet a months' pay he'd preparing to counter a pincer formation. There's no way in hell we'd get past."
"Nor will we survive being this close to Solhephaestus. Status update: Hercules radiators functioning at 74 percent, and rising. We cannot survive more than 10 minutes like this, Commander."
A timer appeared on Blisk's monitor, counting down from 600 seconds.
"Very well. Admiral, shut down all non-essential systems to help out our radiators. Tell the rest of the fleet to do the same."
Blisk began to smirk. "Next, set a course for the large asteroid that's coming our way."
"Commander, do you plan to attempt a gravitational slingshot around the asteroid? To catapult us towards Outpost 207 faster than Graves expects, flying past his blockade and surprising him?"
"It's a pretty good plan, aye."
"I have already calculated the chance of such a plan's success to be 7%, Commander. Our radiators will melt before we can reach the asteroid."
Blisk's smile fell slightly.
"Admiral, are all the ships in the fleet either docked with a larger ship or cruising in our shadow?"
"Yes, Commander."
"Then here's the fun part. Ion shield capacity?"
"Current canister is at 20%, Commander, but we have another 15 cannisters."
"Divert all ions to the rear shields. Tell the shield operator to turn up the ion expenditure to maximum."
As the Hercules and her fleet sailed across the sun towards the asteroid the space by the Hercules' thrusters began to crackle and pop, the ions appearing there soaking up some of the sun's radiation.
"Ion expenditure at maximum, Commander."
"Now what are the radiators at?"
"72 percent, Commander. Cooling. But at this rate of Ion expenditure we will run out of Ions in 40 seconds."
"Turn the shields off, then. I want you to turn them on whenever the radiators hit 95%, and turn them off whenever the radiators are below 95%. Keep them balanced at near-critical."
"Very well, Commander. I trust you."
Radiators vented heat faster the hotter they were, until they hit 100% capacity – at which point, they would not be able to radiate any more heat for fear of melting, increasing the load placed on the other radiators. If the ship got too hot the ship's AI – in this case, Spyglass – would have to turn off different parts of the Hercules to keep it from getting too hot. First to go would be the weaponry system, the last, the AI core.
Life support was considered expendable. It was better for the ship to return home piloted by an AI than for the AI to turn off and then have thecrew get cooked a few minutes afterwards.
"Admiral, how many ions do we have left?"
"14 canisters. We will not survive."
"Continue on our current course."
"Very well, Commander."
"What the hell are they doing?" asked Graves, face contorted in confusion. "Outpost 207 is this way."
"Admiral," said the chief of navigation, "Scans indicate that they are too close to the sun. Keeping in mind that light takes 17 minutes to get here from their current position, they may already be dead."
"Spyglass," Graves murmured, "what are you doing?"
"Commander, we have reached our last canister of ions," informed Spyglass.
"Time till we can slingshot around that Asteroid?"
"In six minutes we will be caught in it's gravitational pull; in eight we will be within it's shadow for a few minutes, in 13 our slingshot will be complete. But our ion reserves will not last any longer than one minute, and we will melt after two. Commander, your plan is not going to work.
"Spyglass. Do you trust me?"
"Not any more."
Blisk frowned.
"Have you ever played Chess, Admiral?"
"Many millions of times, Commander. Please get to your point quickly; we have little time."
"Let me tell you a story, Admiral.
A king engages in battle and is defeated. He flees with his queen and a few knights and pawns. The enemy cuts off his escape. Do you know what the king does?"
"I would have to see the board, Blisk."
"Have I been demoted?"
"Yes. 15 seconds until our ion supplies are depleted."
"Spyglass, don't you think it's time to sacrifice one of our Queens?"
There was a brief pause.
"Blisk, I do not understand the analogy. Players only have one queen while playing chess."
Blisk pushed a button on his console. "Logistics cruiser IMS Queen of hearts, do you copy?"
"Yes, Commander. Captain Edmond Wensley speaking."
"Queen of hearts, can you remotely operate your ship?"
"Yes, but it would be inadvisable for combat."
"Then I want you to eject your entire crew and evacuate to the Hercules, then set your ship to move directly between the Hercules and Solhephaestus."
"Commander, I'm not sure what -"
"Just do it, Captain! We have little time!"
"Very well. Ejecting crew."
The Queen of hearts began to vent escape pods which moved slowly toward the Hercules.
"Blisk. Our hull is getting too hot. We have forty seconds. I will turn off life support and warp out of here in thirty."
"Trust me, Spyglass. Captain Wensley, do you copy?"
"Loud and clear, boarding the Hercules now."
"Where is the Queen of hearts?"
"Directly behind the Hercules' thrusters, Commander."
"Activate your tactical jump drives, Captain. Spyglass, how are we looking for radiators now?"
"You are no longer a member of the bridge, Blisk, and I – oh."
"Admiral?"
"Commander Blisk, your rank has been reinstated. Bookmarking memories for tactical analysis."
Jump drives compress the space in front and behind them, increasing the speed at which objects moved in the direction of the jump drive. If used properly, they could be used to accelerate dangerous objects away from another ship.
Dangerous objects, such as the radiation from Solhephaestus.
"Radiator load decreasing to 97 percent, Commander.
Blisk grinned evilly.
"Graves," he whispered. "I'm going to show you who's better."
"Commander Blisk, incoming transmission from Captain Wensley. Patching him through."
"Commander." Wensley said, a hint of fear in his voice. "There's something you need to know."
Blisk leaned toward his console. "What?"
"I lied. You can't manually operate a logistics cruiser from afar, not when there's so much radiation interfering with the infra-red signal."
"Wait -"
"And you know what they say about captains going down with their ships."
"Wensley -!"
"It's okay, Commander. I guessed what you were going to do. This was my own decision and I accept full responsibility. Updating system shutdown priorities for heat distribution. Setting warp drive to highest priority. Don't worry, Commander. Even after I die, the warp drive should continue to function for a – geez, it's hot in here." He sounded a little more panicky, a little more high pitched.
"Anyway, Commander. I have a favour to ask of you."
"Anything, Captain."
"I object," said Spyglass. "There are limits to what we can do."
"Admiral, please. We will make it happen. Continue, Captain."
"I have... a son. He's fourteen years old, lives in a boarding school back – ugh, I'm sweating. School on New Athens. His mother left me and I had to pay the bills somehow. Commander, I want you – nngghhh – to make sure he's taken care of."
Blisk stared straight at the man on the monitor, a man whose final words were to try secure the safety of his child.
"I promise, by the power of God in heaven above and by the power of men on Earth, that your son will be taken care of. I will ensure it personally and will pay from my own pocket if necessary."
"Thank you, Commander... I can feel the heat, even now."
"Fire detected," the ship's AI said. "Venting Oxygen."
"Nobody would blame you if you ended it now, Captain. Do yourself a mercy if you wish."
"No," Edmond said, and Blisk could see now that the man was caressing an old photograph. Printed on real paper with real ink. "I -" he gasped, "want to," gasp, "see -"
He collapsed to the ground. "one..."
"Commander. Radiators functioning at 87 percent. We will make it to the asteroid."
"Admiral, please add Captain Edmond's son to my notebook and remind me of him when we reach Outpost 207. And add him to our black box's recordings."
"You actually intend to honour your promise?"
"Spyglass." Blisk glared straight at the robot's optical sensor. "Be he a friend or a foe, you always honour a dying man's last wishes." |
This entry was originally posted at http://tongari.dreamwidth.org/22506.html . Please comment there using OpenID.
Actually I am 100% sure someone else has not only done a Sandman/Inception crossover but dunnit far more eloquently (I got tired after page 4, re-read it and said WAIT WHAT IS THIS EVEN ABOUT)Spoilers for Inception (well.. everything) and Sandman books 9 and 10 (although you have no excuse for not reading them)If you haven't read Sandman or if you're like, why is Dream's hair white... there is no real need to understand but do read the whole thing when you can. I'm not the biggest Gaiman fan but I really, really, really love the Sandman series, the writing is somehow more touching than what I read in his novels. It was a huge influence and also heartrendingly beautiful as a story about this.. anthropomorphic personification whom you feel you should dislike but find yourself rooting for by the end.Anyway this (piece of tribute nonsense) is pretty bad and sorry if it doesn't make sense. I just.. wanted to stop drawing after page 4. (Personally I like the last pages the most though)The end! Thanks for reading.In hindsight I was thinking about responsibility for one's actions, which was a theme that stuck with me after the show (due to the characters' abundance and lack of it, depending on who you look at). Also what Saito thought about while he was in limbo, and how surreal that must have been, and how finding Saito became something of a 'reality defining quest item' to Cobb, and how Cobb could possibly have been sure that he'd found the real Saito in the end.More though, I wondered what Dream would say about these guys tramping all over his realm. And it had to be this Dream; let's face it only this Dream would be compassionate enough to empathize somewhat with both Cobb and Saito, and nice enough to let Cobb search for Saito on his own terms (i.e. on his own, since Cobb probably views Dream as just another projection). Morpheus would have just thrown them unceremoniously back to reality, then sent Cobb to Hell (literally) when Cobb kept coming back to look for Saito(I do however appreciate how this Dream is just as socially inept as Morpheus lol) |
On Sunday’s broadcast of ABC’s This Week, host (and former Clinton operative) George Stephanopoulos brought up the latest investigation conducted by James O’ Keefe’s Project Veritas group that shows Democratic operatives plotting violence at Trump rallies, voter fraud schemes, and creating hubs of communication for pro-Clinton super PACs.
Clinton campaign pollster and adviser Joel Benenson was on the panel and admitted that he hasn’t seen the tapes of O’Keefe’s yearlong investigation into this dark web of operatives within the progressive Left, but he’s confident that their people aren’t doing anything illegal.
“Both of those operatives [Bob Creamer and Scott Foval] have now resigned, and they did receive money from the DNC; they were sub-contractors. Isn’t this exactly the kind of behavior you all have been complaining about?"
Benenson was ready for his talking points:
Well, it’s a video of somebody [O’Keefe] who has a track record of doctoring videos. These people have resigned, whether they were talking to him on camera, or whether there was some snippet there that’s been manipulated and taken out of context, I don’t know. It’s actually the first time I’ve seen the video, George.
Benenson then said it was an act of desperation for Republicans to focus on this and not the words of Donald Trump, who he noted has egged on violent acts at his rallies in the past. Well, so did Vice President Joe Biden, who said he wished he could go back to his high school days so he could beat up Trump for his lewd remarks about women. Ladies, where would you be without creepy Joe Biden wishing he could time travel and commit acts of violence on your behalf.
Yet, back to This Week, Stephanopoulos asked Benenson, “Are you confident that you don’t have other operatives out there doing exactly the same thing?”
“I’m pretty confident. I mean, I think as I said, we’re talking about a guy who has a track record of doctoring videos, these people resigned, as you said—and if this was happening day-in and day-out, we would know about it,” replied Benenson before reiterating how Trump incites violence at his rallies.
It’s clear that Benenson hasn’t seen the videos. Did you ever ask yourself why these two guys resigned, Benenson? If he had, he would know that Veritas caught how Clinton operatives plotted to shut down Trump’s Chicago rally, which was successful. He would see that Scott Foval and others plotted to instigate the violence at these rallies in order to put the Trump campaign in a negative light with the national media. And now, we have new footage showing that Hillary Clinton was directly involved in the Donald Duck operation, where activists dressed as a duck to prod Trump for not releasing his taxes at campaign events. It began at the DNC, but it was then handed over to Americans United For Change, which Foval and Creamer both work for, to get “ducks on the ground.” The expenditures were handled by AUFC, but they were getting their orders from the Clinton campaign. As O’Keefe noted, this is illegal coordination between a presidential campaign and a super PAC, Americans United For Change. But then, Benenson probably knew what was going on, as Lady Macbeth hatched this operation. |
Bitcoin cash’s developer team is shedding new light on how it might manage the world’s third most valuable cryptocurrency network.
Details, not only about its development roadmap, but also the ideas of its development team, have so far been sparse since the new blockchain forked off bitcoin on August 1. Yet given the sudden, controversial manner in which it was created, it might come as no surprise that bitcoin cash’s developer team isn’t taking a more conservative approach.
In an email addressing other bitcoin cash developers over the weekend, Amaury Sechet, lead developer of the main bitcoin cash client, Bitcoin ABC, argued that the network should pursue an aggressive means of increasing its transaction capacity.
Sechet wrote:
“If we want to scale big, we’ll have to do a [hard fork] from time to time.”
This could be a questionable plan, however, since critics contend that developers shouldn’t have the power to enforce hard fork changes not everyone in the ecosystem will agree with. Further, since such changes could lead to splits into competing assets, it’s widely believed developers should deploy changes in a way that prioritizes keeping the network together.
Supporters, though, argue that hard forks offer a way to make more types of software upgrades, and give users more choice over technical decisions.
Pushback remains
In an effort to highlight those benefits, Sechet proposed a rough roadmap of hard fork changes he believes will lead to the best future scaling, including changing how transactions are ordered and block data is computed.
According to the developer: “There seems to be a few changes that are relatively obvious, but hard to advocate for in a climate where [hard forks] are not acceptable.”
And his conclusion may be right.
Already, there’s disagreement about how often hard forks should be deployed. In an earlier email thread, bitcoin classic (another client compatible with bitcoin cash) developer Tom Zander argued against executing too many changes that way, saying:
“At every hard fork we put a strain on the ecosystem. Less is better.”
Other upgrades
Forks or otherwise, this isn’t the only challenge bitcoin cash developers will have to decide on.
For one, developers are discussing better mining difficulty algorithms, since the current one, while enticing to bitcoin miners in the short term, might lead to problems for the cryptocurrency down the line, especially since bitcoin cash hasn’t yet been widely adopted.
Further, in an effort to entice more users to use the cryptocurrency, developers want to keep transaction fees close to zero – an effort to further differentiate itself from bitcoin (which has seen higher average transaction fees as of late).
“We want to bring back zero-fee transactions ASAP,” bitcoin cash developer Calin Culianu told CoinDesk. “This lets people that want to save money transact cheaper. This is bitcoin the way it was back in 2013, when I first fell in love with it.”
Though, he admitted this could “open the floodgates to spam attacks” and have a negative impact on the network, it provides further evidence of the design decisions currently being considered in an attempt to differentiate the cryptocurrency.
Fork and knife image via Shutterstock |
We regularly hear about how El Niño events raise the temperature across much of the planet, contributing to spikes in global average temperature such as the one witnessed in 1998, with severe bush fires, droughts and floods.
Indeed, the extra warmth is typically much more apparent over land than in the oceans, despite El Niño being chiefly thought of as an ocean temperature phenomenon.
How is it that an event predominantly characterised by a warm blob of water in the tropical eastern Pacific can have such a pervasive effect on global land temperatures?
Consider the following: in your home you have a heater that warms all of the rooms. If you increase the heater’s temperature by one degree you would expect that the rest of your home also warms a bit, but probably less than one degree, and that the most remote rooms would warm least of all. Surprisingly, this is not what happens when you warm the tropical oceans in our climate system. This heater heats up all the “rooms” by more than itself.
It turns out that if we were to warm all of the oceans on Earth by 1C, the land would, as a direct result, warm by 1.5C. On average, the land always warms more than the ocean. The key difference here is that when you warm the tropical oceans you also release additional water vapour into the atmosphere by evaporation from the oceans’ surface.
When the warm air over the oceans rises to higher levels in the atmosphere, the moisture in the air rains out, releasing extra heat – called “latent heating of condensation”. This leads to extra warming of the air.
The temperature above the land comes into balance with the warmer higher-level temperatures above it and, because the land surface is much drier it warms right away without surface evaporation cooling it.
Where El Niño comes in
In a study we published last year, we used climate models to perform simulations in which we raised and lowered the temperature of the oceans to see how the land would respond. As expected, we found that land temperatures varied more than ocean temperatures, and changes in ocean temperature were amplified over the land.
To explore how an El Niño or La Niña event would affect this land/ocean contrast, we then introduced the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) into our model as the main source of temperature variability in the oceans.
This time, instead of assigning the whole ocean a uniform temperature, we simulated El-Niño/La-Niña conditions. We made the tropical Pacific Ocean warm and then cool over a period of four years (in the real world, ENSO is much less regular than this but the oscillation typically lasts about that long). We then watched to see how the rest of the ocean and land would respond.
Remarkably, the global land surface temperature still responded with increased variability, relative to the ocean. If the ocean surface temperature increased or decreased by 1C, the land temperature increased or decreased by almost 1.5C. Essentially, we found that the global land temperature can be altered simply by changing the temperature of the tropical Pacific Ocean.
Authors
You might ask: what if you changed the temperature of the Southern Ocean, or the North Atlantic, or some other bit of ocean instead? Would you get the same result? The answer is no.
Why is the tropical Pacific so influential?
The answer is because of tropical convection – the tendency for warm air and moisture to rise high into the atmosphere.
Atmospheric convection in the tropics reaches up to about 5-10km above the ocean, taking the warmth into the mid-to-upper troposphere. This is fuelled by the heat release from the condensing moisture in the tropical air. The colder oceans do not have the capacity to evaporate that much water vapour and therefore to generate the kind of convection that reaches this high.
Warm air penetrates the troposphere’s upper levels (as opposed to the lower troposphere immediately above the surface) and in the tropical upper atmosphere air can flow freely and easily distribute heat, so regional differences in temperature are evened out. The warm temperatures above the Pacific Ocean spread out and encircle the tropics. The warmth from tropical ocean convection can also spread out of the tropics and influence atmospheric temperatures in the mid-latitudes.
What does this mean for the years ahead?
We know that land and ocean temperatures fluctuate around an average value. However, that average value is increasing as a result of global warming resulting from human carbon dioxide emissions.
At the same time, we currently have a large, potentially record-breakingly hot El Niño brewing in the Pacific Ocean, which is expected to keep growing at least through to January.
As the current El Niño combines with the background warming of climate change, we can expect land temperatures to continue to spike, potentially surpassing last year’s global record average. This warmth is likely to persist through and slightly beyond the period of the El Niño, increasing the likelihood that 2015 and 2016 will be very warm years indeed for the planet. |
Physics is a natural science concerned with the study of matter and energy applying laws that govern natural phenomena. It encompasses the study of the universe from the largest galaxies to subatomic particles, covering mechanics, radiation, heat, electricity, sound, magnetism and the structure of atoms.
A good background of physics is essential in understanding our planet, our neighbouring planets, our solar system, and the universe. It offers explanations for every observed natural phenomenon. Physics is widely regarded as the most central and fundamental science and forms the basis of many other sciences including astronomy, chemistry, biology, oceanography, seismology, and zoology.
Physics is an incredibly stimulating science, challenging our imagination with quantum mechanics, electrodynamics, chaos theory, and electromagnetism. It has contributed to modern society with the development of lasers, computers, homeland security, power transmission, biomedicine and drug development, cancer therapy, medical imaging, light sources, and much more.
Science really prospers and advances when individuals share the results of their experiments with others in the scientific community. There is a certain logic that scientific software should therefore be released under an open source license. This article focuses on selecting the best open source software for physics and physics education. Hopefully there will be something for interest here for all budding physicists.
So, let’s explore the 10 physics tools at hand. For each application we have compiled its own portal page, providing a screenshot of the software in action, a full description with an in-depth analysis of its features, together with links to relevant resources and reviews.
Physics Tools CompHEP Automatic computations in High Energy Physics ROOT Solves the data analysis challenges of high-energy physics McStas Neutron ray-trace simulation application Step Interactive physics simulator Elmer Finite Element Software for Multiphysical Problems Octopus Real-space, real-time implementation of TDDFT Geant4 Toolkit for the simulation of the passage of particles through matter OpenFOAM Facilitates the numerical solution of partial differential equations Gerris Flow Solver Tool for generic numerical simulations of flows Tracker Video analysis and modeling tool designed to be used in education
Return to our complete collection of Group Tests, identifying the finest free and open source Linux software.
Related |
…and the EU’s contempt for the safety of its citizens who bring humanitarian relief to Gaza’s women and children
And on the high seas Israeli warships and helicopters assault and hijack vessels of other nations with impunity in order to maintain their illegal blockade of Gaza.
by Stuart Littlewood
In 2008 two humanitarian vessels got through to Gaza. In an article entitled ‘Keeping the Sea-Lane to Gaza Open’, I wrote…
The success of the ‘Free Gaza’ boats in breaking the siege, and their safe arrival and departure, was due to the intervention and good offices of the British Foreign Office… Before the peace activists set sail, the British government was asked about “action to ensure the freedom boats’ safe and uninterrupted passage to Gaza considering these are international waters and Palestinian territorial waters”. Any attempt to stop the boats would surely infringe the right to freedom of movement to and from Gaza, and seriously breach the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, to which Israel is a party. The minister in charge of Middle East affairs Kim Howells… has now revealed that “FCO officials spoke to Israeli officials in advance of the trip and Israel allowed the boats peacefully into Gaza.” Bravo. Our chaps in London lift the phone to their chaps in Tel Aviv and – hey presto! – it’s all fixed. That’s diplomacy…
Yet here we are nearly three years later going through the same sorry process while ruthless foreign interests still relentlessly expand their influence by stealth, by subversion and by intimidation to persuade the rest of the world to let them do as they please in the Middle East and beyond.
In the UK and the EU we are losing control fast and will soon become abject Zionist stooges like America. It will soon be impossible to take back our country without organizing serious insurrection.
And on the high seas Israeli warships and helicopters assault and hijack vessels of other nations with impunity in order to maintain their illegal blockade of Gaza.
The Jerusalem Post reports that the German Left Party has issued a resolution prohibiting its parliamentary representatives from taking part in the upcoming Gaza Flotilla in an attempt to buy off criticism that the party is anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. They will not participate “in Middle East conflict initiatives that call for a one-state solution for Palestine and Israel and boycotts of Israeli products, as well this year’s Gaza Flotilla.”
An expert on left-wing anti-Semitism called Alex Feuerherdt told the newspaper that “it goes without saying” that participation in the Gaza Flotilla action is a “military attack on Israel”.
Such are the lengths to which the Zionist conspiracy will go to control the thoughts and actions of ordinary, decent people.
And this is the background against which the Gaza Freedom Flotilla II sets sail. The conspirators don’t want the boats to reach Gaza because their safe arrival would drive a coach and horses through the Zionists’ control-freakery. So they shriek and squawk and threaten dire consequences like last year when they assaulted the Mavi Marmara with lethal force in international waters, not caring how many they killed.
This has prompted the following statement by flotilla organizers to the UN Human Rights Council a few days ago: “We are determined to sail to Gaza. Our cause is just and our means are transparent. To underline the fact that we do not present an imminent threat to Israel nor do we aim to contribute to a war effort against Israel, thus eliminating any claim by Israel to self-defense, we invite the HRC or any other UN or international agency to come on board and inspect our vessels at their point of departure, on the high seas, or on their arrival in the Gaza port. We will – and must – continue to sail until the illegal siege of Gaza is ended and Palestinians have the same human and national rights those of us sailing enjoy.” – Steering Committee of the International Coalition for Gaza Freedom Flotilla II
One of the organizers in London tells me that when the British boat’s final passenger list is confirmed, the Foreign Office in London will be contacted with the details and asked to “act to ensure the safe passage of their citizens”.
Did the UK have a right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland in response to IRA terror?
Israel is clearly acting illegally by interfering with the flotilla’s peaceful mission, so what are the chances that Britain and other countries will provide necessary protection?
A UN fact-finding mission, dealing with the assault on the Mavi Marmara, has already declared that “no case can be made for the legality of the interception and the Mission therefore finds that the interception was illegal.”
As for Israel’s naval blockade, it is “considered by the Mission to constitute collective punishment of the people living in the Gaza Strip and thus to be illegal and contrary to Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention”. The action by Israel’s military in intercepting the Mavi Marmara on the high seas was “clearly unlawful” and could not be justified even under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations [the right of self-defense].
And let’s remember that Security Council resolution 1860 (2009) emphasizes “the need to ensure sustained and regular flow of goods and people through the Gaza crossings” and calls for “the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment”.
The Centre for Constitutional Rights has also concluded that the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip is illegal under international law. “Due both to the legal nature of Israel’s relationship to Gaza – that of occupier – and the impact of the blockade on the civilian population, amounting to ‘collective punishment’, the blockade cannot be reconciled with the principles of international law, including international humanitarian law. It is recalled that the international community, speaking through both the United Nations and individual States, has repeatedly and emphatically called for an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip.
“The flotilla did not seek to travel to Israel, let alone ‘attack’ Israel. Furthermore, the flotilla did not constitute an act which required an ‘urgent’ response, such that Israel had to launch a middle-of-the-night armed boarding… Israel could also have diplomatically engaged Turkey, arranged for a third party to verify there were no weapons onboard and then peacefully guided the vessel to Gaza.”
Craig Murray was deputy head of the teams which negotiated the UK’s maritime boundaries with France, Germany, Denmark (Faeroe Islands) and Ireland. As Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, he was responsible for giving political and legal clearance to Royal Navy boarding operations in the Persian Gulf following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, in enforcement of the UN authorised blockade against Iraqi weapons shipments. He is therefore an internationally recognized authority on these matters.
Referring to the participation of an American boat in Flotilla II, he says: “Right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the United States is a full party. Any incident which takes place upon a US flagged ship on the High Seas is subject to United States legal jurisdiction. A ship is entitled to look to its flag state for protection from attack on the High Seas…
“Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the High Seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.”
“There are however fundamental flaws in this line of argument. It falls completely on one fact alone. San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict, and presumably does not wish to be. San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.”
He acknowledges that Israel suffers from sporadic terrorist attacks from Gaza but this does not come close to reaching the bar of armed conflict that would trigger the right to impose a naval blockade. When the UK suffered continued terrorist attack from the Irish Republican Army, sustaining many more deaths than anything Israel has suffered in recent years from Gaza, it would have been ridiculous to argue that the UK had a right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland.
So Israel doesn’t have a leg to stand on. Therefore “all good men and true” should rally to support these brave voyagers and ensure their governments back their play.
But here’s a question put by MEP Kyriacos Triantaphyllides and the answer from the EU Commission…
Question:
One year after the military action by Israel against a convoy carrying humanitarian aid supplies to Gaza, during which at least ten civilians were killed, another humanitarian aid flotilla to Gaza is now being organised, the principal cargo being supplies of stationery for school pupils. Is the EU and in particular the Commission aware of the new mission that is being organised and what is its position on this matter?
Given the participation of EU Member State nationals and the presence of MEPs, will the EU take any measures to ensure that the personal safety of its nationals is not endangered?
Answer:
After the organisation of a flotilla heading to Gaza in May 2010, the Quartet, of which the EU is a member, stated that all those wishing to deliver goods to Gaza should do so through established channels, so that their cargo can be inspected and transferred via land crossings into Gaza. It also stated that there was no need for unnecessary confrontations and that all parties should act responsibly in meeting the needs of the people of Gaza.
In the same spirit, the Chair’s Conclusions of the 13 April 2011 meeting of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee (AHLC) on donor coordination for Palestine reiterated a call on all international supporters to make use of the existing land crossings to channel their support to Gaza, and abstain from provocations.
The Commission stands by this line. A flotilla is not the appropriate response to the humanitarian situation in Gaza. At the same time, Israel must abide by international law when dealing with a possible flotilla. The EU continues to request the lifting of the blockade on Gaza, including the naval blockade.
EU Member States have the responsibility to protect their citizens abroad via their consular services. This responsibility covers assistance for their citizens who might participate in a possible flotilla. As in May-June 2010, the EU Delegation in Tel Aviv stands ready to function as a hub for information and to coordinate the efforts of the consular services of EU Member States.
So there you have it… the treacherous contradictions we have come to expect from this unelected body, including advice that Member States have a responsibility to protect their citizens AFTER they’ve been murdered.
The “established channel” for delivering goods to Gaza is of course the time-honoured route by sea, which is protected by maritime and international law and therefore entirely appropriate. There’s nothing “provocative” about it. The organizers have offered their cargoes for inspection and verification by a trusted third party to allay Israel’s fears about weapon supplies. They should not have to dirty their hands dealing with the belligerent regime that’s cruelly turning the screws on civilians with an illegal blockade. Anyone suggesting they must do so seeks to legitimize the blockade, which we all know to be illegal and a crime against humanity.
Members of the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee include the Palestinian Authority and the Government of Israel, so no wonder it bends over backwards to accommodate Israel’s criminal action.
Read more by Stuart Littlewood |
January 6, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) – Norway’s Barnevernet, or child welfare service, has begun the process of adopting out the five Bodnariu children it seized from their Pentecostal parents Marius and Ruth in November, according to the children’s uncle, Daniel Bodnariu.
Bodnariu told LifeSiteNews that Barnevernet intends to adopt out the children, who range in age from nine years to four months, but that the agency must first “take away the parents’ rights” in a “fylkesnemdna,” or county council hearing, the date of which has not been set.
He stated that Marius and Ruth’s lawyer plans to challenge Barnevernet’s decision in Norway’s Superior Court, but that no trial date has been set.
Meanwhile, international protest on behalf of the beleaguered family is building via Facebook. Demonstrations at the Norwegian embassies are planned in 24 countries so far, including Russia, Poland, India, Slovakia, Denmark, Ireland, Romania, as well as in the USA and Canada, where rallies are scheduled in Washington DC on January 8, 2015, and in Ottawa on January 9.
As well as street protests, a petition organized by Pastor Christian Ionescu of Chicago’s Elim Romanian Pentecostal Church has been signed by 48,683 to date.
The Naustdal regional Barnevernet seized the Bodnariu children, whose father Marius is a Romanian citizen and IT engineer working in Norway, and whose mother Ruth is Norwegian, on November 16 and 17, according to Daniel Bodnariu’s reports, posted online by Ionescu.
According to that account, the principal of the school attended by the two oldest children, Eliana, 9, and Naomi, 7, called Barnevernet and reported the girls told her they were being disciplined at home.
She also mentioned that the parents are “very Christian” and that “the grandmother has a strong faith that God punishes sin, which, in the Principal’s opinion, creates a disability in children,” Bodnariu reported.
According to the Christian Post, the principal wanted counseling for the girls, but Barnevernet took custody of all five children, including the infant Ezekiel, on grounds that they were being physically abused.
Daniel Bodnariu attests that the agency found no evidence of any kind of abuse and that Barnevernet officials relied on the stories of the two eldest girls, who reported that their parents slapped them occasionally, which he described in the Post as “light punishments.”
It is illegal in Norway to slap or physically punish a child.
The children were placed in three different foster homes, the Post reports. The parents can visit their infant son, whom Ruth was nursing when he was seized, only twice a week, and their two sons Matthew, 5, and John, 2, once a week. They are forbidden to see their daughters.
Daniel Bodnariu told LifeSiteNews in an email that Barnevernet plans to do a psychological evaluation of his brother and sister-in-law in February.
Several sources report that Norway’s Barnevernet is notorious for seizing children on the slimmest of pretexts, frequently from families where both or one of the parents is non-Norwegian.
According to the London-based Christian Today, in May 2015, an estimated 3,000 children from immigrant families were in Norwegian state custody.
It cited as notable examples of Barnevernet practices its infamous 2012 seizure of two children from Indian couple Anurup and Sagorika Bhattacharya, which the Indian government fiercely protested, as well as an April 2015 seizure of a two-and-a-half month old daughter of a Slovakian father and deaf Norwegian mother, for, among other reasons, “lack of eye contact between girl and her parents.”
The Norwegian online magazine NewsinEnglish reported that an estimated forty percent of children in Barnevernet custody are from immigrant families.
One frequent cause for Barnevernet taking children from their parents is the Norwegian prohibition against physical punishment of children, it noted.
The agency has been criticized by India, Sri Lanka, and eastern European countries such as Russia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Russia for its actions, NewsinEnglish reports, as well as for placing children from immigrant families in Norwegian-speaking homes, which some countries claim violates the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Barnevenet did not respond to several emails from LifeSiteNews.
Elisabeth Johansen, spokesperson for Norway’s Minister of Children and Equality Solveig Horne, told LifeSiteNews in an email that “the government does not have the authority to comment on or intervene in individual cases.”
She noted that “the County Governor at regional level inspects the work of the child welfare services. Additionally, child welfare cases are subject to a strict duty of confidentiality. Only the parties to the case have access to the case documents.”
Pastor Ionsescu told Christian Post that because the Bodnariu family has many members in both Romania and the United States, the case is a good opportunity to bring awareness of the Barnevernet’s “abuse of power.”
“This is an issue that is not going to die down for us,” Ionsescu said, adding that the community is prepared to fight until the Bodnariu children are returned to their parents. “If it takes year, then so be it – we are not going to stop.”
For information on the demonstrations, or to sign the petition, go here http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/christian-family-persecuted/
(c) Life Site News www.lifesitenews.com |
In 2010 the left-wing Center for American Progress published a monograph titled "The Progressive Intellectual Tradition in America." Its purpose was to shine an admiring spotlight on the Progressive activists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, men and women who used government power to "promote true economic and social opportunity for all people." The problem with that monograph, as I noted at the time, was that it failed to mention the Progressive movement's widespread support for racist Jim Crow laws, sexist labor laws, and eugenics laws. It was, I concluded, "a fairy tale version of history, one that highlights what the authors see as the accomplishments of progressivism while totally ignoring anything that might detract from their lopsided narrative."
Fast forward to the present day and the Center for American Progress has produced yet another work of lopsided historical nonsense. The objective this time around is to undermine the presidential campaign of Rand Paul by attacking the libertarian influences that may have shaped Paul's thinking. "Though Paul now presents his anti-government philosophy as the antidote to a society which dooms far too many poor people of color to a life behind bars, that philosophy has far more insidious roots," asserts ThinkProgress, an arm of the Center for American Progress. What are those insidious roots? They are the classical liberal ideas of the polymath British social theorist Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a figure whose heyday coincided with the rise of Progressivism in the United States.
According to ThinkProgress, "Spencer's own philosophy can safely be described as genocidal libertarianism" because Spencer "literally argued that the impoverished and the unfortunate should be left to die in order to purify the human race."
Did Spencer literally argue that? Of course not. It's another left-wing fairy tale. Here's why.
The idea of smearing Herbert Spencer as a proto-eugenicist is not original to ThinkProgress. It originated in Richard Hofstadter’s 1944 book Social Darwinism in American Thought, in which Hofstadter falsely characterized Spencer as a sort of founding father of the eugenics movement. Forced sterilization and other collectivist eugenics measures, Hoftstadter asserted, have "proved to be the most enduring aspect" of Spencer's "tooth and claw natural selection."
As evidence for this assertion, Hofstadter pointed to the following passage (also cited by ThinkProgress) in Spencer's 1851 book Social Statics: "If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best they should die."
Here is something I previously wrote about that allegedly offensive Spencer passage:
[It] certainly sounds rough, but as it turns out, Hofstadter failed to mention the first sentence of Spencer's next paragraph, which reads, "Of course, in so far as the severity of this process is mitigated by the spontaneous sympathy of men for each other, it is proper that it should be mitigated." As philosophy professor Roderick Long has remarked, "The upshot of the entire section, then, is that while the operation of natural selection is beneficial, its mitigation by human benevolence is even more beneficial." This is a far cry from Hofstadter's summary of the text, which has Spencer advocating that the "unfit...should be eliminated."
Similarly, Hofstadter repeatedly points to Spencer's famous phrase, "survival of the fittest," a line that Charles Darwin added to the fifth edition of Origin of Species. But by fit, Spencer meant something very different from brute force. In his view, human society had evolved from a "militant" state, which was characterized by violence and force, to an "industrial" one, characterized by trade and voluntary cooperation. Thus Spencer the "extreme conservative" supported labor unions (so long as they were voluntary) as a way to mitigate and reform the "harsh and cruel conduct" of employers.
Along similar lines, Spencer devoted 10 chapters in his two-volume Principles of Ethics to spelling out the importance of “Positive Beneficience,” otherwise known as charity towards the impoverished and the unfortunate. In other words, if you bother to read what Herbert Spencer actually wrote, you will quickly discover that he never advocated anything remotely like letting the poor die in the streets.
Spencer's Progressive-minded contemporaries, on the other hand, frequently did embrace eugenics and frequently did throw their explicit support behind eugenicist measures aimed restricting or eliminating "unfit" groups from American society. The influential Progressive economist John R. Commons, for example, who served as an adviser to Progressive hero (and notorious racist) Woodrow Wilson, favored anti-immigration restrictions precisely because Commons thought those restrictions would help preserve the racial health of the white working class. Economic competition from immigrants, Commons complained, "has no respect for the superior races."
Herbert Croly, the leading Progressive journalist who founded Progressivism's flagship magazine, The New Republic, openly championed the cause of eugenics. Writing in an unsigned New Republic editorial on March 18, 1916, for example, Croly argued that, "Imbecility breeds imbecility as certainly as white hens breed white chickens; and under laissez-faire imbecility is given full chance to breed, and does so in fact at a rate fair superior to that of able stocks." The proper solution, he wrote in the magazine’s editorial voice, was for Progressive-minded government officials to take eugenicist action:
We may suggest that a socialized policy of population cannot be built upon a laissez faire economic policy. So long as the state neglects its good blood, it will let its bad blood alone. There is no certain way of distinguishing between defectiveness in the strain and defectiveness produced by malnutrition, neglected lesions originally curable, or overwork in childhood. When the state assumes the duty of giving a fair opportunity for development to every child, it will find unanimous support for a policy of extinction of stocks incapable of profiting from their privileges.
And then there is Progressive icon Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. As I note in my new book, Overruled: The Long War for Control of the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Holmes delivered his most famous majority opinion in the 1927 case of Buck v. Bell, in which he allowed the state of Virginia to forcibly sterilize a 17-year-old girl who had been raped and impregnated by the nephew of her foster mother and then committed to a state institution for the "socially inadequate." Carrie Buck, Justice Holmes ruled, was a "feeble minded white woman" whose future freedom to procreate would "sap the strength of the State." In its 2010 memorandum on "The Progressive Intellectual Tradition in America," the Center for American Progress hailed Justice Holmes as a Progressive thought leader who correctly interpreted "the Constitution as a 'living' document." Buck v. Bell was not discussed.
Here's an idea: Perhaps the Center for American Progress should spend less time lobbing false charges at libertarians and spend more time confronting its own dishonorable roots in what can safely be described as genocidal progressivism.
Related: Another Bout of Anti-Libertarian Nonsense from the Left-Wing Center for American Progress |
Part of the Oakland Raiders’ struggle to put up points this season can be attributed to the offensive line’s inability to create holes for a ground attack that’s averaging an anemic 88 yards per game.
Offensive coordinator Todd Downing believes his blockers are still growing as a group.
“I think we’re an evolving unit,” Downing said during media availability Thursday. “I think we’re growing, I think we’re learning each other’s styles a little bit – getting Marshawn [Lynch] back adds an element into the run game there – so it’s going to be a growing process.”
Considering that we’re already in Week 9, the team doesn’t much time to complete that growing process.
At 3-5 for the season, the Raiders’ season is clearly on life support. Getting Lynch back could be a boost for the team’s running game that was porous in the Week 8 34-14 loss against the Bills.
The return of “Beast Mode” could also insert some new energy into a team that is at a cross roads at this point in the season.
Either the Raiders will find a way to jump-start the running game, which will naturally make things easier for quarterback Derek Carr, or it will continue to sputter and the pressure will only mount for Oakland’s franchise player.
Ultimately, the running game goes where the offensive line leads, and going up against the NFL’s No. 6 rush defense won’t be a cakewalk for Downing’s unit. |
The prognosis wasn't good last week when the Japanese Space Agency, JAXA, lost communication with its new Hitomi X-ray astronomy satellite. However, there was some hope a few days later when the space agency reestablished intermittent contact with the spacecraft orbiting some 580km above the Earth.
Astronomers have since been observing the satellite, originally known as Astro-H, as it has orbited around the Earth. The photos with this story, captured by University of Alabama astronomer William Keel on Sunday evening, appear to show different pieces of the spacecraft catching the Sun as they slowly rotate. The brightest moments are probably caused by solar panels spinning into view. The pattern of brighter and then fainter light suggests at least two large pieces, with different periods, are tumbling out of control.
One astronomer who has been tracking Hitomi closely, Jonathan McDowell at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, tweeted on Sunday evening, "Sadly, I now believe that the radio signals were the dying sighs of a fatally wounded Astro-H."
Originally there was speculation that debris could have struck the satellite, but JAXA has since said there was an equipment failure of some sort. Possible causes of the spacecraft's breakup include a rupture of the helium tank that houses the X-ray instruments, a fuel leak, or a battery failure.
Regardless of the cause, the loss of the spacecraft is a major blow to X-ray astronomers, who have few tools available to probe high-energy but very-short-wavelength X-rays that are absorbed by the Earth's atmosphere. X-rays are useful for studying black holes, neutron star mergers, highly magnetized star quakes, and other unusual high-energy astrophysics. But scientists were most intrigued by the new types of high energy cosmic interactions they might see with Hitomi and which they cannot predict. |
In December of 2014, 49-year-old Katherine Lavoie was shot by her husband. A month earlier, 29-year-old Daryne Gailey and 6-year-old London McCabe were both killed by their parents.
In the year since our last vigil, our community has lost at least twenty more victims.
In the past five years, over seventy people with disabilities have been murdered by their parents.
Sunday, March 1st, the disability community will gather across the nation to remember disabled victims of filicide–disabled people murdered by their family members or caregivers.
We see the same pattern repeating over and over again. A parent kills their disabled child. The media portrays these murders as justifiable and inevitable due to the “burden” of having a disabled person in the family. If the parent stands trial, they are given sympathy and comparatively lighter sentences, if they are sentenced at all. The victims are disregarded, blamed for their own murder at the hands of the person they should have been able to trust the most, and ultimately forgotten. And then the cycle repeats.
But it doesn’t have to.
Here’s what you can do in your own community to help spread awareness of these tragedies – and help stop more from happening.
1. Read and share our new Anti-Filicide Toolkit.
This toolkit is intended to provide advocates and allies with concrete tools and resources to use in their own communities, including in response to local incidents. The toolkit includes information about how to understand and respond to filicide, frequently asked questions about filicide, and a guidebook for Day of Mourning vigil site coordinators.
2. Sign up to be a Day of Mourning vigil site coordinator
For the last four years, ASAN, ADAPT, Not Dead Yet, the National Council on Independent Living, the Disability Rights Education & Defense Fund, and other disability rights organizations have come together to mourn the lives lost to filicide, bring awareness to these tragedies, and demand justice and equal protection under the law for all people with disabilities.
On Sunday, March 1, 2015, ASAN and the wider disability community will be holding vigils to mourn the lives of those we’ve lost and bringing awareness to this horrific trend of violence against our community.
If you’re interested in leading a vigil in your area, please sign up to be a Day of Mourning vigil site coordinator here. |
Hello Rocksmith fans!
This week’s DLC comes from the great white north of Winnipeg, Manitoba!
Yes, finally Bachman-Turner Overdrive led by @RandysVinylTap will make their music game debut this week in the ever expanding library of Rocksmith Remastered.
As revealed over the weekend, both You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet off Not Fragile (1974), and Takin’ Care of Business from Bachman–Turner Overdrive II (1973) would be included in the three pack! As expected, the third single (confirmed by Xbox AU) is Let It Ride!
Bachman-Turner Overdrive – $7.99 / Steam
Everything in E Standard (work out)
Are you Bachman or Turner? Either way you’re gonna have a blast with these Canadian Classic Rock ambassadors! So what are you waiting for? Go buy it, or tell us why you aren’t… |
Armenian military scouts demonstrate their skill during a performance to mark the annual anniversary of the Armenian Armed Forces reconnaissance troops formation, some 25 km outside in Yerevan on November 5, 2013 (AFP Photo/Karen Minasyan)
Baku (AFP) - Azerbaijan on Saturday accused arch-foe Armenia's troops of killing its soldier in a new clash amid a Western-mediated push to cauterise the protracted conflict in the South Caucasus.
Friday's skirmish violating the brittle truce comes a day after the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said that the presidents of the two feuding nations were ready to "meet each other later this year" in an effort to end years of hostility.
Azerbaijan and Armenia have been locked in a dispute over the separatist Nagorny Karabakh region since a bloody war in the early 1990s following the breakup of the Soviet Union.
"On July 24, Armenian army units shelled Azerbaijani positions" at the Karabakh frontline and the Azerbaijani-Armenian state border, the defence ministry in Baku said in a statement.
One Azeri serviceman was killed in crossfire, said the defence ministry, claiming that at least five Armenian troops were killed in the clash.
Armenia denied that it had sustained any casualties and accused Azerbaijan of violating a 1994 ceasefire.
"Some 160 violations have been registered over the past night," Armenian defence ministry spokesman Artsrun Hovannisyan told AFP. "Armenia's armed forces returned fire."
On Thursday, the OSCE Minsk Group, which is involved in the efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, said Armenian President Serzh Sarkisian and his counterpart from Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev were ready to meet each other later this year.
The statement was released after the group's Russian, US and French co-chairs travelled to Yerevan and Baku for meetings with the warring countries' leaders.
"They instructed their foreign ministers to continue their work with the co-chairs on an agenda for the presidential summit," the OSCE Minsk Group said.
Officials in Armenia and Azerbaijan did not confirm the statement, however.
Yerevan-backed ethnic Armenian separatists seized control of Karabakh and several other regions of Azerbaijan during the conflict that left some 30,000 dead.
The predominantly Armenian-populated region is internationally recognised as part of Azerbaijan.
Despite years of negotiations, the two countries have not signed a final peace deal to cement the 1994 ceasefire.
Clashes have intensified in the past year along the Karabakh frontline and across the two ex-Soviet republics' shared border.
There was relative calm ahead of and during the inaugural edition of the European Games hosted by Azerbaijan last month. |
Canadian government lies over complicity in CIA torture
By Roger Jordan
13 December 2014
Tuesday’s publication of the US Senate report into the CIA’s brutal interrogation techniques in the aftermath of 9/11 has shed new light on Ottawa’s complicity in acts of torture.
The response of the Conservative government was in keeping with its long-standing refusal to acknowledge any Canadian involvement in torture. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, answering a question in the House of Commons on Tuesday, declared, “This is a report of the United States Senate. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the government of Canada.”
Foreign minister John Baird reacted to a question from the press on the harm done to Canada’s reputation by its complicity with torture programs by arrogantly declaring, “Canada doesn’t torture. Period! Period!” He walked away without answering a follow-up query.
These are barefaced lies. Successive governments have been implicated in facilitating the brutal and inhumane techniques outlined in the Senate document. Canada acted as a major transit route for US rendition flights that sent captured suspects to third countries or CIA black sites to be tortured. According to the Globe and Mail, a total of 20 US aircraft made 74 stopovers at Canadian airports while on rendition flights. The number of flights was second only to the US itself.
Previously Canadian authorities have admitted that information CSIS used to argue for the indefinite detention of Adil Charkaoui and Mohamed Harkat came from Abu Zubaydah, an al-Qaeda terror suspect who figures prominently in the Senate report. The CIA used Zubaydah as something of a “guinea pig” in its torture campaign, including “waterboarding” him 83 times. For years, Canadian authorities insisted before the courts that there was no reason to think Abu Zubaydah had named Charkaoui and Harkat other than willingly.
The Conservative government’s assertions are also disproved by directives it has itself issued to the police and intelligence agencies that explicitly permit them to use information gained through torture and to supply information to foreign intelligence agencies even if it is likely to lead those named to be tortured. These directives apply to Canada’s Security and Intelligence Service (CSIS), the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), the military, Canada’s signals intelligence agency (CSEC), and the border control agency.
According to the federal framework document on which the directives are based, in the event of a “substantial risk” that sharing information with a foreign agency will cause someone to be tortured, consultation with a deputy minister or minister is required to approve it. Guidelines state that the minister must take into account the immediacy of the threat and the danger to Canadian national security interests.
A statement released by the office of Public Safety Minister Stephen Blaney was no less disingenuous than Harper. “Our government does not condone the use of torture, and certainly does not engage in it.” But the statement then went on to make clear that information gained through the use of torture would be used by Canadian intelligence. “If we get a tip from any source that Canadian lives are in danger, we will act to save those lives.”
It is no secret that Canada, more than any other country, has integrated its intelligence and military services with those of its southern neighbour. Ottawa has been Washington’s unflinching ally for decades.
Canada’s intelligence services are a key component of the global five eyes alliance, which includes the American NSA, and the intelligence agencies of Britain, New Zealand and Australia. Speaking to CBC, a former CSIS agent explained that links were even more direct with the CIA, since CSIS liaison officers work in CIA headquarters, while CIA officials do likewise in Ottawa.
Criticizing Canada’s ties to the US intelligence apparatus, Ottawa-based human rights lawyer Paul Champ told the media, “I don’t think that anyone in the intelligence community in the world, at least in democratic countries, can wake up tomorrow and tell themselves that their relationship with the United States and the CIA can remain the same. Until and unless the United States shows that there’s going to be real accountability for these criminal acts, I think our relationship with the CIA has to be very closely monitored and reviewed at all times.”
In reality, a diametrically opposed approach is being taken by Canada’s ruling elite. Showing its contempt for democratic rights, Canada’s parliament is in the process of substantially expanding the powers of the spy agencies. Under an antiterrorism bill currently making its way through parliament, CSIS is explicitly authorized to share information with the members of the “Five Eyes” and to conduct investigations abroad.
This policy has the full backing of all of the parliamentary parties. The latest reforms to counterterrorist legislation have been backed at the committee stage by both the Liberals and Official Opposition New Democratic Party (NDP). In the wake of the torture report, the NDP merely called on the Harper government to revoke the directives issued in 2011 permitting the five government agencies to use information gained via torture. No call for a serious investigation, let alone the prosecution, of individuals implicated in torture was made.
A series of cases involving Canadian nationals demonstrate that Canada’s intelligence agencies not only assisted the US rendition program, but also developed its own version of the practice. This involved Canada’s national-security agencies encouraging the detention of Canadian terror suspects who were travelling abroad by third countries. These countries included authoritarian regimes where the prohibitions on detention without charge and the mistreatment of prisoners contained in Canadian law did not apply. The job of interrogating suspects, frequently with the use of torture techniques, was in this way subcontracted by Ottawa, which made intelligence gathered in Canada available to the country concerned.
Canadian intelligence passed information to the US on Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was arrested in New York in 2002. Arar was then flown to Syria, where he was imprisoned for a year and tortured. During this time, Canadian intelligence gave information to the Syrian regime to be used in his interrogation, including a list of questions he was to answer. False confessions were extracted from him that he had participated in an Al-Qaeda plot. Recognizing the injustice done to him, he was awarded over $10 million in a court appeal following his release.
Another infamous case is that of Omar Khadr, who was arrested in Afghanistan as a 15-year-old and transferred by the US to Guantanamo Bay where he was tortured. Canadian agents visited him at the prison camp to carry out their own interrogation, even though they were fully aware that he had been subject to sleep deprivation immediately prior to their visit. Despite strong government opposition, he has since been returned to Canada. The Harper government is currently engaged in an attempt to have the Supreme Court overturn a lower court decision to consider him as a young offender, because were it to stand, Khadr would likely be released.
Canada’s military is also complicit in torture. Canadian forces in Afghanistan passed detainees on to both the US and Afghan troops, although Ottawa and the military knew there was a strong likelihood they would be tortured. Approximately 400 detainees were handed over by Canadian troops to the Afghan army, while 40 were transferred to US custody, according to a report in the Toronto Star. This is a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, which make it illegal to transfer persons to authorities where there is a reasonable belief that they will be tortured.
The Harper government repeatedly blocked efforts to investigate the full extent of Canadian involvement in torture in Afghanistan. Citing national security considerations, it prevented a parliamentary committee from accessing documents from the Canadian Armed Forces authorizing the transfers. Officials who could have provided more information on what went on, such as one of Ottawa’s leading diplomats in Afghanistan, Richard Colvin, were threatened with prosecution if they spoke publicly.
A UN report in 2012 issued a further condemnation of this practice, accusing the Canadian government of “complicity in torture.” The UN committee also called on Ottawa to pay compensation to three torture victims, Abdullah Almalki, Ahmad Abu Almaati and Muayyed Nureddin, who had been the subject of a public inquiry over their arrests in Egypt and Syria. These cases provided yet more examples of how Canadian intelligence worked directly with authoritarian regimes, first to have their nationals detained, and then abused using torture methods to extract confessions.
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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Strangers used their combined strength Friday to lift a car off a hit-and-run victim who had found himself pinned in the Bruckner section of the Bronx.
As CBS2’s Matt Kozar reported exclusively, the driver remained on the loose Friday night.
It took seven people to lift the car off the man stuck underneath it. Witnesses said the 69-year-old man had been dragged down a Bronx street, and his clothes were left tattered and ripped.
Orlando Urena, 73, was one of the Good Samaritans who rushed over to the car, but could not lift it on his own. So he yelled for others to help.
Urena said he thought the man underneath the tire was dead. But somehow, he survived.
Cellphone video showed paramedics putting a neck brace on the victim, who police have not identified.
Investigators said he is in critical, but stable, condition at Jacobi Medical Center.
Witnesses said the car hit the man as he was walking in this crosswalk at Boynton Avenue and Westchester avenues around 11 a.m. Friday. They said the car dragged him about a quarter of a mile down the block.
But instead of stopping, the driver kept going and then bailed from the car, witnesses said.
Ahmed Muhammad runs a food cart on the corner, and said he saw the whole thing.
“This half of your body is inside the car, and the head and this part is outside. And then the car takes him,” Muhammad said.
Witnesses watched as the driver took off running. Some chased him, but he got away.
Urena said in Spanish that he did not get a good look at the driver, who police said remained on the loose late Friday. |
With teams having trialled various design solutions on their new cars over the course of pre-season testing, you are never quite sure what you are going to see when they arrive at the first round of the season. Here are some of the highlights from Melbourne, as chosen by renowned technical analyst and illustrator Giorgio Piola…
Haas VF-17 - shark fin modifications Haas were forced to remove their T-wing after first practice because it was causing excessive vibration and movement in the shark fin attached to the car’s engine cover. Keen to reinstate it in time for qualifying and the race, the team added carbon-fibre reinforcements (red arrow) to the fin in order to make the whole assembly stiffer.
Renault R.S.17 - rear wing pick-up point change In pre-season testing Renault had the pick-up point of their rear wing pillar attached directly to the top of the DRS actuator (inset, red arrow). At first this looked like a very trick solution, but then fears surfaced that it could provide an illegal advantage in terms of the wing’s performance. This prompted a modification, retained for Australia, with the pillar instead attached lower down to the actuator mounting, rather than to the actuator itself.
Red Bull RB13 - S-duct design For 2017, Red Bull have kept the same design philosophy as last year for their S-duct, which channels airflow from under the nose through to the top of the chassis. There are two openings in the lower section of the chassis (one shown here, bottom arrow) that go to cool the boxes housing electronics near the front of the sidepods. Meanwhile, the main ramp for the S-duct (unseen) streams airflow out of the openings at the very top of the chassis, as indicated by the multiple blue arrows).
Ferrari SF70H - rear-view mirror mountings For Australia, Ferrari modified their mirror pillars, with a new rounded mounting (inset, red arrow). Instead of a vertical fin behind the mirror, they introduced a horizontal, triangular fin in the lower section. The aim of the changes is to improve the efficiency of the airflow in this critical part of the chassis. Expect to see a lot of similar refinements in this area on other cars this season. |
Future teachers are finding their job prospects may be better abroad than in their home province considering the decline in enrolment and the list of schools under review for closure in New Brunswick.
A job fair for education students at the University of New Brunswick on Thursday drew 30 school boards and organizations to try and lure prospective teachers.
Only one of them was from New Brunswick, and only half were Canadian. More than an third of the exhibitors were from the United Kingdom.
New Brunswick's four anglophone school boards currently have just two full-time teaching vacancies posted online.
Kiera Stillwell of Keswick Ridge says she's "not naive to the fact there are not many teaching jobs in this province." (CBC) Rhea Malatestinic of Hampton is working on her master's degree in education and, like other graduating students, realizes she may have to travel to find work after graduation.
"It seems like you need French. It's a big thing," she said.
"I do have French, but even then the job prospects [in New Brunswick] seem a little grim I guess. Half the recruiters here are for the U.K., so that says something itself."
Half the recruiters here are for the U.K., so that says something itself. - Rhea Malatestinic, fourth-year education student
Kiera Stillwell, a final year education student from Keswick Ridge, is prepared to travel to the U.K. or Latin America to teach after graduation.
"Ideally, I'd like to stay here and work but I'm not naive to the fact there are not many teaching jobs in this province and I'm not bilingual, so I'm definitely keeping my options open," said Stillwell.
"I love to travel. I'd go anywhere."
Holly Lydon of Atlantic Education International is looking to recruit 85 teachers to teach the New Brunswick curriculum in schools in China, Bangladesh and Brazil. (CBC) Atlantic Education International offers the New Brunswick curriculum at schools in China, Bangladesh and Brazil and was at the fair looking to recruit 85 teachers.
"We can offer a service where we can provide jobs where they can go to other countries and get some experience and come back and hopefully teach in their own province," said Holly Lydon of Atlantic Education International.
Caitlin King, a British recruiter from UTeach Recruitment, says England needs teachers because fewer young people can afford to study education.
"Canadian teachers have excellent qualifications that transfer well in the U.K. system and there's also not too much of a difference between the curriculum here and the curriculum there," said King. |
The Republicans’ top oligarch, foreign casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, is already plotting how he can buy the next election and protect himself from criminal prosecution. Adelson spent $150 million on Republicans in the 2012 election, more than anyone in any American election in history. But he’s already promising to spend double that amount come the next election, and has already met with prospective 2016 Republican Presidential candidates like Governors Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, and Bob McDonnell.
Now, Adelson is looking out for his own butt. The Washington Post reports the he’s flying to Washington, DC to meet with Republican leaders in hopes of changing the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Currently, President Obama’s Department of Justice is investigating Adelson for violating the Act, as he’s accused of bribing officials in China to get his casinos built. Which is, of course, why Adelson, who otherwise supports gay marriage and socialized medicine, spent so much money to defeat President Obama and thus get a new Justice Department that won’t prosecute him.
This is the life of the rich and powerful in America. When they get in trouble with the law, they just buy new politicians and get new laws to protect themselves. It used to be called bribery, but today, thanks to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, now it’s just business as usual. |
Not too long ago, film student Anthony van der Meer was lunching in Amsterdam, when his iPhone suddenly disappeared. He reported the smartphone stolen, but to no avail. The thief had already disposed of the SIM card and disconnected the device from the internet. It was gone.
According to statistics, Dutch police registers nearly 300 smartphone thefts on average each week - and most of these devices never turn up.
Curious who steals these phones and where they eventually end up, van der Meer decided to try and get his phone swiped again - but this time around the film student pre-loaded the device with spyware so he could keep tabs on the thief and get to know him up close and personal.
Van der Meer installed anti-theft app Cerberus, which would give him access not only to the location of the device, but also to its contents and features. This means he could not only retrieve any file stored the phone, but also use its camera and microphone to surreptitiously spy on the bandit.
After four days of desperately trying to get his phone stolen again, someone finally took the bait and snatched the decoy smartphone.
Over the next two weeks, the film student secretly followed the thief as he wandered around Amsterdam with his lifted phone, documenting his each and every move - and eventually turning it into a documentary.
Find my Phone is the final outcome. Equally thrilling and disturbing, this short docufilm is an intimate exploration of the mind and life of a thief through the lens of technology.
Curious to see where van der Meer's investigation ultimately takes him? Watch the full documentary in the video section above. |
TRENTON — Gov. Chris Christie will address the Northeast Republican Leadership Conference in Philadelphia this summer.
Rob Gleason, chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania confirmed Tuesday that Christie will make an address sometime during the conference, which will be held June 18-20. Gleason praised his Republican neighbor as "a proven reformer who's not afraid to tackle the toughest issues."
Indeed, Christie made headlines in New Hampshire on Tuesday by touching the "third rail" of politics, entitlement reforms. He called for raising the Social Security full-retirement age to 69, and the early retirement age to 64.
Other potential 2016 GOP presidential candidates slated to speak at the Northeat GOP forum include former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina.
Christie made six trips to the Keystone State last year during his chairmanship of the Republican Governors Association to fund-raise for the organization, and twice traveled to the state to stump for Gov. Tom Corbett, but couldn't save his fellow Republican from being ousted on Election Day last year.
Gov. Christie Speaks at NH Institute of Politics on Entitlement Reform 10 Gallery: Gov. Christie Speaks at NH Institute of Politics on Entitlement Reform
Claude Brodesser-Akner may be reached at [email protected] |
Throughout the Indonesian island of Borneo, orangutans (Pongo pygmaeus) are getting squeezed out of their forest habitats by the voracious palm oil industry. Farmers frequently chop or burn down native forests in order to replace them with lucrative and often illegal plantations. This forces any of the arboreal apes that survive the assault—most don’t—to attempt moving to new territories, either on their own or with the assistance of orangutan conservation groups.
But not just any new territory will do. A study published October 14 in PLoS One finds that orangutans depend on very high-calorie foods for their survival. That means that any new habitats the apes colonize will need to have ready food supplies, something that may not be available in all locations.
The study, by researchers from Rutgers University in New Jersey and six other institutions, examined two of Borneo’s healthiest orangutan populations . The research, conducted from 2003 to 2010, found that each population’s habitat contains a different makeup of available food, one of which was far less than ideal.
Both populations live in what are known as peat forests, tropical areas with leafy, waterlogged soil that prevents local trees from absorbing much nutrition through the ground. The first population lives in the Sabangau Forest, a very typical peat environment where the peat is up to four meters deep. The second population lives 63 kilometers away in the Tuanan forest where the peat is much shallower (one to two meters deep) and the trees receive additional nutrients from seasonal river floods.
The qualities of the Tuanan forest had two important effects: not only was there more food, there were also more orangutans. The Tuanan apes live at a population density of between 4.3 and 4.5 individuals per square kilometer, compared to 2.3 apes per square kilometer in Sabangau.
In addition to more fruit and other food in Tuanan, the composition of all plants differed. In Tuanan, orangutan diets were higher in lipids and non-structural carbohydrates, which provided them with more energy. The apes in Sabangau had a diet higher in fiber, which did not.
All told, the Tuanan apes were able to consume as much as 2,500 more calories per day while spending less time searching for food. That’s energy they could put into breeding. Sabangau orangutans consumed fewer calories but expended more energy trying to fill their bellies, leaving little for anything else.
Lead author Erin Vogel, an evolutionary anthropologist at Rutgers, said in a prepared statement that the study shows how environment can affect large, arboreal animals. “If animals can't obtain enough energy, reproductive output and population sizes will suffer.”
This is especially important since conservation groups are trying to get the Indonesian government and palm oil companies to set aside new habitats for orangutans on both Borneo and Sumatra (the Sumatran apes are a separate species, P. abelii, but they’re similar enough to the Borneon orangutans, P. pygmaeus, that this study can apply to them both). The areas could serve as new homes for apes that would be relocated away from the palm-oil industry or those who already live in sanctuaries while they await safe new homes. Choosing those new sites for their food content, according to the researchers, will be critical. “If you want to increase the populations of this endangered species, you need to make sure that they are being reintroduced into suitable habitats,” Vogel said. “It means looking at forests carefully, making sure they are productive, and that there is enough food to eat in terms of caloric gain.”
Of course, there’s already a major wrinkle in all of this. Borneo and Sumatra are currently plagued by thousands of intentionally set forest fires caused by slash-and-burn agriculture. Conservation groups tell me that some of these fires are burning in or near important orangutan habitats, including Sabangau. Not only does this endanger the wild apes, the fires are also quickly eliminating any new habitat that into which they could be relocated.
Indonesian officials this week said they have little hope of putting the fires out before this November’s rainy season. Similarly, orangutans in the wild have increasingly little hope of having any forest left in which to live as the next few years carve out yet more of their habitat.
Photo by Budi Nusyirwan. Used under Creative Commons license
Previously in Extinction Countdown: |
The federal law that makes possession of marijuana a crime has its origins in legislation that was passed in an atmosphere of hysteria during the 1930s and that was firmly rooted in prejudices against Mexican immigrants and African-Americans, who were associated with marijuana use at the time. This racially freighted history lives on in current federal policy, which is so driven by myth and propaganda that it is almost impervious to reason.
The cannabis plant, also known as hemp, was widely grown in the United States for use in fabric during the mid-19th century. The practice of smoking it appeared in Texas border towns around 1900, brought by Mexican immigrants who cultivated cannabis as an intoxicant and for medicinal purposes as they had done at home.
Within 15 years or so, it was plentiful along the Texas border and was advertised openly at grocery markets and drugstores, some of which shipped small packets by mail to customers in other states.
The law enforcement view of marijuana was indelibly shaped by the fact that it was initially connected to brown people from Mexico and subsequently with black and poor communities in this country. Police in Texas border towns demonized the plant in racial terms as the drug of “immoral” populations who were promptly labeled “fiends.”
As the legal scholars Richard Bonnie and Charles Whitebread explain in their authoritative history, “The Marihuana Conviction,” the drug’s popularity among minorities and other groups practically ensured that it would be classified as a “narcotic,” attributed with addictive qualities it did not have, and set alongside far more dangerous drugs like heroin and morphine.
By the early 1930s, more than 30 states had prohibited the use of marijuana for nonmedical purposes. The federal push was yet to come.
The stage for federal suppression of marijuana was set in New Orleans, where a prominent doctor blamed “muggle-heads” — as pot smokers were called — for an outbreak of robberies. The city was awash in sensationalistic newspaper articles that depicted pushers hovering by the schoolhouse door turning children into “addicts.” These stories popularized spurious notions about the drug that lingered for decades. Law enforcement officials, too, trafficked in the “assassin” theory, under in which killers were said to have smoked cannabis to ready themselves for murder and mayhem. |
The election of Donald Trump is easy to understand, if you know where to look for answers. In a recent wide-ranging interview with the New York Times, Peter Thiel, the Trump adviser, Facebook billionaire and staunch libertarian, offered this illuminating insight:
Using two wrestling terms he learned, Mr. Thiel says that many people assumed Mr. Trump was “kayfabe” — a move that looks real but is fake. But then his campaign turned into a “shoot” — the word for an unscripted move that suddenly becomes real. “People thought the whole Trump thing was fake, that it wasn’t going to go anywhere, that it was the most ridiculous thing imaginable, and then somehow he won, like [Hulk] Hogan did,” Mr. Thiel says. “And what I wonder is, whether maybe pro wrestling is one of the most real things we have in our society and what’s really disturbing is that the other stuff is much more fake. And whatever the superficialities of Mr. Trump might be, he was more authentic than the other politicians. He sort of talked in a way like ordinary people talk. It was not sort of this Orwellian newspeak jargon that so many of the candidates use. So he was sort of real. He actually wanted to win.”
It is clear that Donald Trump is a political performance artist whose shtick is borrowed from professional wrestling. This is an observation I have repeatedly made about Donald Trump here and elsewhere for more than a year. It has also become a truism of sorts that has appeared -- often without attribution or mention -- in many other places both online and in print.
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To reiterate: Professional wrestling is a type of scripted storytelling that uses athleticism and dramatis personæ to tell classic stories that draw upon basic archetypes that could easily be found in Shakespeare or ancient Greek mythology. In the struggle between good and evil, right and wrong, and the moral complexities of the modern antihero, Donald Trump (in the language of professional wrestling) is a "heel" or villain. In keeping with that role, Trump has shown a flagrant disregard for the truth, pretends to be a victim when in fact he is the aggressor, is a bully, lords his wealth over others, cheats and has little regard for the rules. Trump's version of the heel professional wrestler is also a bellicose, verbally dexterous womanizer and misogynist. In professional wrestling, the secret to success is often described as "being yourself with the volume turned way up." Donald Trump has taken this maxim to the extreme. There appears to be little to no difference between Donald Trump the real person and Donald Trump the public persona and pro-wrestling-inspired politician.
Donald Trump's embrace of professional wrestling's aesthetics served him well during the 2016 presidential campaign. He cut mean-spirited "promos" on his Republican rivals that exposed their weaknesses and eventually drove them out of the presidential race.
Trump's insistent lying as well as his larger-than-life personality allowed him to outmaneuver the American news media in at least two ways.
The media surrendered to Trump, giving him at least $3 billion worth of free coverage, because he made for compelling television. The media was also neutered by Donald Trump. Its supposed journalistic standards of balance and neutrality were ill-equipped to deal with a presidential candidate who learned from reality TV and professional wrestling that the way to win is to always keep the camera focused on him.
But Donald Trump's professional wrestling heel persona is also quite limiting. His bullying behavior, arrogance, crudeness and desperate desire to humiliate his enemies are traits and behaviors ill-suited for the presidency. Success in professional wrestling is often defined by being loud and grand, using big movements to command attention, filling up both the ring and the TV camera's frame with one's personality and physical presence. By comparison, a successful president should be precise, direct, diplomatic and calm.
Trump's much-anticipated press conference last Tuesday also demonstrated the limits of professional wrestling as a playbook for American presidential politics. It featured all the trappings of a pro wrestling event: Mike Pence acted as Trump's manager and one of his opening acts; Trump insulted CNN as "fake news" and mocked BuzzFeed as "garbage"; there were Trump allies in the audience who cheered on cue; and there were huge stacks of manila file folders overflowing with blank pieces of paper (in professional wrestling such a prop is a called a "gimmick") that were supposed to be Donald Trump's agreements to recuse himself from his many businesses while serving as president.
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But the spectacle of Trump's first press conference could not mask how he is criminally underprepared for the responsibilities of the office, amazingly ignorant about basic public policy matters, ill-tempered, mired in corruption scandals, likely compromised by a foreign power that desires to manipulate him, and grossly incompetent. In many ways, Donald Trump is like a much-heralded and anticipated professional wrestler who is new to an organization but in reality cannot perform in the ring. He is all looks and talk, but possesses no substance or real skill.
To point.
Donald Trump is Handsome Jimmy "the Boogie Woogie Man" Valiant, without the charisma or language skills.
Donald Trump is "Ravishing" Rick Rude, without the body.
Donald Trump is Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, without either the quick wit or the intelligence.
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Donald Trump is Nikolai Volkoff, without the Russian accent.
Donald Trump is "The Million Dollar Man" Ted DiBiase, without a fraction of the ring prowess -- although Ben Carson would make a fair substitute for DiBiase's manservant, Virgil.
What of Donald Trump's fans?
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They are "marks." In the parlance of professional wrestling, this is one of the greatest insults. Trump's voters do not know the difference between the real (a "shoot") and the theatrical ("kayfabe" or "a work"). Trump's marks wanted him to "drain the swamp" and to stand up for "real Americans" like them, but in reality he is a self-interested plutocrat whose policies will actually punish the angry "white working-class" voters who installed him in office. Perhaps even more pathetic, many of Trump's voters know that he is lying to them but continue to support him anyway, because their heel champion has promised to hurt Muslims, immigrants, gays and lesbians, poor people, women, African-Americans and other people of color.
Unfortunately, this is not an episode of "WWE Raw," "Ring of Honor," or "New Japan Pro-Wrestling." Donald Trump, a professional wrestler wannabe who believes that his character is real, will soon be president of the United States. There will be no last-minute rewrites of the script, or "run-ins," where another wrestler comes from out of the audience, hits Trump over the head with a chair and steals away the championship belt. With the ascendance of this real-life fascist authoritarian, American politics has fully become professional wrestling. We should all be terrified. |
Sir David Attenborough, eat your heart out. You may travel to the most exotic biosystems on our planet, but you will be unlikely to glimpse such surreal couplings as we have just witnessed in the voting lobbies of the House of Commons. There was Jeremy Corbyn putting his name to the legislation of Theresa May. There was John McDonnell fusing with Boris Johnson. Most miraculous to behold, Diane Abbott, mercifully recovered from the headache that was so life-threatening that it prevented her from participating in earlier proceedings, marched in step with Michael Gove. Voting together and voting for a very hard form of Brexit. Which meant that it wasn’t even close. The Brexit Bill smashed through the Commons unamended and by 494 votes to 122, a crushing government majority of 372.
This is remarkable at several levels. For all the chatter about obeying the will of the people, how MPs voted was wildly unrepresentative of what the country did last summer. Had the narrowness of the 52/48 referendum result been replicated in parliament, the government’s majority would have been a much more modest 26. It was also dramatically out of sync with the actual beliefs of most MPs, since three quarters of them did not want to leave the EU. Not only did they sign off on Mrs May’s plan to initiate divorce proceedings next month, they did so having been forewarned by the prime minister that she will pursue a very stark and high-risk version of Brexit.
Britain is departing the single market and most likely quitting the customs union as well. She had even told them in advance that she is prepared to crash out of the EU with no deal at all. That this could be in the range of potential outcomes would have horrified most MPs six months ago. It still does so. Yet they waved it through with the salute of a stonking majority. Finally, and very significantly, parliament didn’t even claim for itself any meaningful input when Mrs May enters the negotiating chamber with the EU.
This self-emasculation by MPs at such a momentous juncture in our history requires examination. We need to step back and ask how we got from June to here, how we travelled to the point where a thumping majority of parliamentarians, including so many Labour MPs, gave a mandate to the prime minister to pursue a negotiation strategy in which most of them don’t believe and which the majority think will end with calamity for Britain. If it all goes horribly wrong, this is a question that is going to preoccupy historians and blight the reputations of all but the minority who tried to stand in the way of the juggernaut.
This was not an outcome written in the stars or fated by the gods. It was not even ordained by the 52% of voters who tipped the referendum result to Out. By narrowly voting to leave the EU, the country answered one question, but in doing so it raised a host of other questions about the precise shape that Brexit should take. This was up for grabs. The hard Brexiters understood that instantly. They didn’t stop campaigning when the referendum result came in. They continued agitating and with a burning ferocity that was amplified by the Brexit press at its most megaphonic. They did so to ensure that they could impose their interpretation of what the referendum meant.
Softer versions of Brexit were framed as a “sell out” and a “betrayal”. Any suggestion that parliament had a right to place conditions on how the government approached the negotiations were blackened as “wrecking tactics” to thwart “the will of the people”. While the hard Brexiters were busy stretching the meaning of the referendum to fit their desired outcome, the stunned Remainers were still winded from their defeat. Slowly, those who wanted to preserve a close relationship with our neighbours began to get their act together. Campaign groups were organised. Learned papers were written. Alternatives to hard Brexit were mooted. But they lacked the organisation, the energy and the unity of their rivals. They were badly handicapped because there never was a coalescence around one agreed version of soft Brexit to compete with the hard-core model.
This shaped the context in which Theresa May made her calculations. Milder versions of Brexit were considered inside Number 10, but discarded because of the belief in Mrs May’s inner circle that they would end up with a messy “halfway house”, a compromise that would ultimately please no one. Once she had decided to prioritise immigration control over every other consideration, she was remorselessly driven to the hard Brexit position of quitting the single market. This upped the risk of it being a long-term economic disaster, but had the short-term political merit for her of simplicity and clarity. It was also the line of least resistance in terms of the Europhobic media and the hard-Brexit constituency within her party. The majority of her cabinet were Remainers. Some of them were ardent Remainers, including the home secretary and chancellor. Around about half of all Tory MPs were Remainers. They were cowed by the atmospherics created by the hard Brexiters and scared of a prime minister whom they have learned to cross at their peril.
Whenever a mutiny seemed to be brewing, Mrs May proved adept at confecting a concession that turned out not to be a concession at all. There was a clamour for a white paper detailing her objectives. So a white paper was rushed out. It revealed next to nothing new about her negotiating plan, but it did make it a little bit easier for potential Tory rebels to wrestle their consciences into submission. There was a demand that parliament have the final say on the eventual deal. So parliament was told it would be consulted, but only on a take-it-or-leave-it basis, which will force MPs to accept whatever Mrs May comes back with, even if the terms are atrocious for Britain, because the alternative would be worse. A government seriously committed to involving parliament would have granted MPs a decisive verdict on the outcome of the negotiations and the power to send ministers away to try again if the deal wasn’t good enough. A parliament serious about asserting its rights would have insisted on such a guarantee.
On the crucial amendment that would have secured parliament a real say, just six other Conservative MPs joined Ken Clarke in defying the Tory whips. The feebleness of most of the Tory pro-Europeans was related to the continuing disintegration of the Labour party as it daily finds fresh ways to fail as an opposition. We now have an opposition in which a three-line whip is busted even by whips. To be fair to Jeremy Corbyn, any Labour leader would face a horrendous dilemma over Brexit because of the way it has split the party’s electoral coalition. Even the most skilled of leaders would be struggling to bridge that division. Mr Corbyn has made it so much worse because of his many other weaknesses. He has lost old friends and not replaced them with any new ones with his unwise tweet declaring “the fight starts now”. That has provoked a lot of grim mirth among people who would have liked to see some fight from him when it might have counted: during the referendum campaign or in the parliamentary struggles of the past fortnight. His dire approval ratings and massive poll deficit with the Tories suggest that Mrs May would win, and do so handsomely, any time she contrived to engineer an early election. That provided another reason for Tory MPs not to be brave.
It does not take too much imagination to see how a stronger, more plausible Labour leadership, one clear and consistent about its objectives and commanding the confidence of the parliamentary party, could have done a better job of squeezing concessions out of the government about the shape and the mechanics of Brexit. The Labour leadership essentially sold the pass the moment it declared there were no circumstances in which it was going to block or even just delay the triggering of article 50. That told the government that it could behave pretty much as it liked; it warned any Tory MP thinking about rebellion that joining hands with the opposition would most likely prove a futile gesture and a pointless sacrifice of career prospects.
The legislation now goes to the House of Lords after parliament’s half-term break. Peers are heavily opposed to hard Brexit and the government has no majority on the claret benches. There will be some activity around the issue of the rights of EU citizens already living and working in Britain. But what MPs have done makes it very much less likely that peers will put up serious resistance to the government over its negotiation timetable and strategy. The size of the Commons majority backing the government will intimidate the unelected house.
Parliament will not be entirely voiceless over the next two years. MPs will retain their inalienable rights to comment and question, to carp and moan, to quibble and quarrel. But they have left themselves essentially powerless to influence the outcome of the most important negotiation in Britain’s postwar history. MPs will be allowed to yap. As the juggernaut crashes on. |
Depictions of the historically and canonically poor Akizuki-class destroyers (nickname: "duckies") Akizuki, Teruzuki, and Hatsuzuki being lavishly treated to a meal, either singly or as a group. Also inclusive of images where their poverty is the main topic.
The fourth Akizuki-class girl implemented in the game, Suzutsuki, is a known self-sustainer, growing pumpkins. This is a reference to the postwar agricultural activities of her crew. She is thus put in a different light than her sisters. As a side effect, many posts of Suzutsuki in this pool may involve her feeding any or all of her sisters. Note that this doesn't necessarily preclude her from being treated to a meal like the others, she can be subject as well as object of the meal.
Pixiv tag: 秋月型にたらふく食べさせ隊 (pixiv search / nicoSeiga search / pixiv Encyclopedia) |
VANCOUVER, CANADA – Some food cart owners are upset with the City of Vancouver, saying they are being ripped off for food cart permits when new entrants are paying just a fraction of their rent.
Many operators have been forced to close up shop on their food carts after paying up to $10,000 annually. The operators have been subletting prime spots all over the city, long before the city’s food cart program with its lower rents came into effect.
A city food cart permit today costs just $1,000 a year under the city’s new program.
Disgruntled food truck owners have been petitioning the city for changes to the system for months, and now it appears the city is finally listening.
Deputy City Manager Sadhu Johnston tells Global News that the city is planning a new bylaw to address the subletting of vendor leases.
“In November, staff plan to bring forward a new bylaw to City Council to address the issue of subletting vendor leases. City staff will be recommending to City Council that no subleasing be allowed for food cart permits and that a transition plan be developed for the vendors that are currently working on subleased locations. The City is working to find a balanced approach which ends the practice of subleasing but minimizes the impact on existing vendors whose businesses rely on subleased sites. The transition strategy will be developed with input from vendors over the coming weeks.”
Find the entire article by Peter Meiszner at globalnews.ca <here> |
The Ayam Cemani Chicken is notable for a couple of things. First of all, partially due to its rarity, especially outside of its native Indonesia, one Ayam Cemani will run you about $2,500. Second, it is clearly the chicken of Our Dark Lord and Savior Satan! The birds exhibit the genetic condition “fibromelanosis,” which renders them totally black—we’re talking feathers, skin, organs, bones, the works. Only their blood is red, albeit a very dark shade.
Frankly, I think such a cool-looking evil luxury animal could be a perfect mascot for some underwordly music subculture. Sure, chickens are not usually associated with the darkness, but stranger pairings have been made—Leather Nun doing ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” for example, is pretty delicious! And if you’re vegetarian, it could make a very suitable avian familiar. Check out the video below for some decidedly unholy clucking—I assume if you play the video backwards you can hear the voice of Beezlebub.
Yum?
Hail Satan.
Gaze into the blackness of its soul
Via Geekologie |
A Somali computer programmer has told how a suspected bomb blast tore open the side of a plane and sucked out an elderly passenger to his death at 14,000 feet.
Survivor Hassan Mohamed Nur said the blast shook Daallo Airlines Flight D3159 five minutes after take off from Mogadishu, Somalia, and tore a hole in the jet's fuselage.
Describing the horror, he said the cabin went black and filled with thick smoke as passengers screamed in the confusion - as investigators in the U.S say a bomb 'probably' caused the explosion.
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Horror at 14,000 feet: A explosion ripped a hole in the side of the Airbus A321 just five minutes after it took off from the Somali capital Mogadishu
Blast: A hole measuring six feet by three feet tore through the Airbus A321 fuselage and an elderly passenger in his 60s was sucked out of the cabin
Mr Nur said the passenger, an elderly man, caught fire before he was sucked from his seat and out of the Airbus A321.
‘I saw the passenger, a man in his early 60s, get sucked out of the plane,' he told MailOnline. 'There was a huge bang. A big hole appeared in the side of the jet and the man disappeared through it.
‘One minute he was sat in his seat, the next it he was gone. He’d been sucked out of the plane.
‘People were screaming. We all thought we were going to die.’
Survivor: Hassan Mohamed Nur described the terror on board Daallo Airlines Flight D3159
The charred body of a man, who may have fallen from the plane, was found in Balad, 18 miles from Mogadishu.
Airline officials say two passengers were hurt in the blast, shortly after take off on Tuesday.
One of those injured was an elderly man from Finland, who is in a stable condition in hospital in Mogadishu.
The Somali government says an investigation has begun.
The plane has been moved from the runway to a private hangar for inspection by forensic experts to inspect, Mr Mohamoud added.
He said that foreign technical experts were involved in the inquiry.
The Daallo Airlines flight bound for Djibouti in the Horn of Africa was able to fly back to Mogadishu and land safely and 74 passengers on board were evacuated.
The pilot Vlatko Vodopivec, 64, from Serbia said: 'When we heard a loud bang, the co-pilot went back to the cabin to inspect the damage and I took over the commands as the procedure demands.
'Smoke came into the cockpit, but it was mostly concentrated in the back of the aircraft.'
He added: 'I think it was a bomb. Luckily, the flight controls were not damaged so I could return and land at the airport.
'Something like this has never happened in my flight career. We lost pressure in the cabin. Thank god it ended well.
'It was my first bomb; I hope it will be the last. It would have been much worse if we were higher.'
Two unnamed U.S. government sources said they believe a bomb caused the blast explosion - although Somali civil aviation authority officials say they had found no evidence that a criminal act had caused the explosion.
Mr Nur added he does not believe the blast was caused by a bomb.
‘I blame the cause the bad weather. Imagine if the cause was a bomb, could the plane make a safe landing within 15 minutes after take off?’ he added.
Awale Kullane, Somalia's alternate U.N ambassador, who was on board the flight, said he 'heard a loud noise and couldn't see anything but smoke for a few seconds'.
Carnage: In the blast, which ripped open the side of the cabin, one passenger told MailOnline how thick smoke filled the plane and passengers screamed in the chaos
Blast: The full force of the blast can be seen from the outside of the Airbus A321 Daallo Airlines flight D3159 after it was safely landed at Mogadishu
Damage: A blast blew a huge hole in the side of the plane just five minutes after it took off from Mogadishu
Mr Kullane said he realised 'quite a chunk' of the plane was missing when visibility returned.
Pictures of the aftermath were posted on social media showing frightened passengers putting on oxygen masks.
Another survivor Mohamed Ali said he heard a bang before flames opened a gaping hole in the plane's side.
'I don't know if it was a bomb or an electric shock, but we heard a bang inside the plane,' he said, adding he could not confirm reports that passengers had fallen from the plane.
One of the people on board the flight filmed the aftermath of the explosion where the remaining passengers at calmly until the aircraft returned to the airport.
In a statement Daallo Airlines said the airbus was operated by Hermes Airlines and said the plane 'experienced an incident shortly after take-off'.
'The Aircraft landed safely and all of our passengers were evacuated safely. A thorough investigation is being conducted by Somalia Civil Aviation Authority,' the Daallo statement said.
Athens-based Hermes Airlines provides planes on a 'wet lease' basis, meaning it leases insured planes staffed and serviced by its crew to other carriers.
Somalia faces terror threats from ISIS-linked al-Shabaab, which is responsible for a number of atrocities in the country.
Aviation sources have suggested the aircraft was delayed leaving Mogadishu meaning the suspected bomb, if it was on a timer, went off at a lower altitude, giving the passengers on board a greater chance of survival.
John Goglia, former member of the US National Transportation Safety Board, said only a bomb or a pressurisation blow out caused by fatigue could cause such a hole in the side of the aircraft.
Cabin crew moved the remaining passengers to the front and rear of the aircraft to keep it balanced for landing
Two people are reported to have been injured after the fire broke out on the Daallo Airlines plane
Djibouti-bound Daallo Airlines flight D3159 pictured after a blast blew a hole in the side of the cabin on Tuesday
However, the black soot around the hole would indicate a bomb.
He said the incident happened before the aircraft hit its cruising altitude which would reduce the possibility of a pressurisation event. |
There are so many Android phones on the market that choosing the best one can mean a ton of research, price-checking, and waiting to see what's coming out in the next few weeks or months. Some are exclusive to specific carriers, some run stock Android, some are littered with bloatware but have powerful features. This week we wanted to know which you thought were the best of breed, not just because they round out a checklist of features or high-end hardware, but because you think they offer a great overall experience. Here's a look at the top five Android phones, based on your nominations.
We put this question to you the same time last year (just after Google I/O), and your top five Android phones then were really impressive for the time. Still, times change, and earlier this week, we asked you to pick a new batch to be the best of the best. You didn't disappoint, and offered way more nominations than we could possibly feature. Remember, our only conditions were that the phones you nominated had to be out and available now. Still, there were some strong trends, and no doubt about your top five. Here they are:
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The poll is closed and the votes are counted! To see which of these five great Android phones you crowned as the Lifehacker favorite, head over to our Hive Five followup post. There you can weigh in with your thoughts on the winner!
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The Nexus 4 (8GB for $299 or 16GB for $349, contract-free) manufactured by LG, is the current official Google phone, and the flagship of the Nexus program. It's available contract-free directly from Google (or from T-Mobile in the US, if you want to buy it through a carrier) so you can pick and choose the carrier you use it with (including pre-paid options), which was a remarkable departure for Nexus phones compared to the previous models. Availability of the device has smoothed out over the past few months, and Google's order page now says a new Nexus 4 can ship to you in 1-2 business days.
The Nexus 4 is a 3G/HSPA+ device, and garnered some criticism for not ticking off the 4G/LTE box in its spec sheet. Regardless, that hasn't stopped the phone from being wildly popular, packing stock Android 4.2 Jelly Bean under the hood, a beautiful 8MP camera on the back (and a 1.3MP camera on the front), a nicely sized 4.7" HD display that protected by Corning's Gorilla Glass 2, and is powered by 2GB of RAM and a Qualcomm quad-core Snapdragon processor. It's a killer device, but it's not perfect: the Nexus 4 eschewed a replaceable battery (although it does have a 2100 mAh battery) and expansion slot for a slim and trim design, so if you need either of those things, it might be a tough sell. Still, it does pack perks like NFC and wireless charging, and it is a Nexus device, so you can trust you'll get timely Android releases, always be up to date, and even if Google falters there's a massive development community working with the phone at all times.
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Despite a horrendous launch event, the Samsung Galaxy S4 ($149-$199 with contract, all US carriers) is without a doubt one of the most super-powered phones on the market today. Samsung's latest iteration in the Galaxy line will, without a doubt, sell millions of units, and become one of the most popular Android phones on the planet, much like its predecessor, the Samsung Galaxy S3 (which, coincidentally, almost made the top five of its own accord). Contrary to the rumors that Samsung would put a little more heft into its phones or improve their build quality, the S4 has almost the same case design and materials of its predecessor, so if you hate plastic and polycarbonate cases, you may not love the S4. The device only recently came out, but high demand has slowed its rollout, but regardless, it is available on all US carriers.
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The Galaxy S4 is a 3G/4G device, and since it's available for all carriers, each carrier model supports each carrier's 4G network. It packs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean, although it's overlaid with Samsung's TouchWiz user interface, which directs you in some cases away from core Android features and to Samsung's branded counterpart services. Regardless, all of Android's features are under the hood, you just might have to dig a little through TouchWiz to get to it. You also get 13MP camera on the back (and a 2MP camera on the front), and it sports a 5" full HD display. Under the hood, the S4 packs 2GB of RAM, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, a 2600mAh removable battery, and it comes in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB varieties with a microSD card slot that allows you to add up to another 64GB to the device. It also sports NFC, and a host of Samsung-specific features, like the S-Health fitness tracking system, Samsung's Smart Scroll and Smart Pause systems, the S Voice personal assistant, and the S Travel trip advisor.
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The HTC One ($199 on contract with AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, $575 unlocked direct from HTC) is a beautiful device. Seriously—it's earned high praise from all corners for its solid build quality and sleek aluminum body. It doesn't just look good, either—even after the launch of the Galaxy S4 and all of its features and power, reviewers are still torn over whether the One or the S4 is the current crown champion of the Android market. Just as well too, HTC needed a powerhouse phone to re-energize itself and get back in front of the Android market, and while the One X and One S of previous years were great devices, the new One flagship device is solid leap forward.
The HTC One ships with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (although an update to 4.2 is on the way), overlaid with HTC's new Sense 5 interface. Sense 5.0 represents a shift away from the old Sense UI, one that you'll either love or hate, but most critics have responded positively to it. Even if you dislike overlaid UIs, Android isn't too far away. You get a 4MP camera on the back that's also capable of full 1080p video (and a 2.1MP camera on the front), and a 4.7" full HD display. The One packs 2GB of RAM, a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor under the hood, a 2300 mAh non-removable battery, and comes in 32GB and 64GB versions. The One doesn't have an expansion slot, so make sure to get the model with the storage you'll need. The HTC One also comes with an array of actually useful HTC features, including the HTC Zoe photo gallery and web gallery that make uploading and sharing photos surprisingly easy, HTC's BoomSound audio processing system (which replaces—sort of—Beats Audio from previous devices), and HTC's Sense Voice noise isolation system that makes sure your callers can hear you and not the ambient noise around you.
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Despite being a "phablet," thanks to its large size and included stylus, the Galaxy Note 2 (prices vary, but average $149 on contract, all carriers, also available unlocked for $5-600) earned high praise from a number of you for being large enough to use for things you might want a laptop or tablet for, but still small enough to be portable and function effectively as a phone. Plus, you can't beat a large screen for reading the web, mobile gaming, or working on the go. The original Galaxy Note made it into our previous roundup, and for many of the same reasons. Whether the Note II is too large for you is entirely a matter of personal preference, but there's no disputing the fact that the it has the features under the hood to make it a solid contender either way.
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The Galaxy Note II is a little bigger than its predecessor, featuring a 5.5" HD screen and shipping with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean (although an update to 4.2 is planned for the summer), and includes Samsung's TouchWiz UI. It comes with an 8MP camera (and a 1.9MP camera on the front). Under the hood, you get 2GB of RAM, a quad-core Exynos processor, and a massive 3100 mAh battery. It comes in 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB versions, and is expandable up to another 64GB. Of course, we can't mention the Note without talking about the included stylus, the S-Pen. Like its predecessor, Samsung has gone out of its way to make the S-Pen actually useful with the Note II and not just a gimmick. S-Note, S-Planner, and built-in support for handwriting and navigation by stylus make it an actually useful way to work with your Note II.
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The Galaxy Nexus (prices vary, but essentially free on contract, all carriers, also available unlocked for ~$300), the flagship of the Nexus program until the Nexus 4 came along, not only made our last roundup, but it took the crown after the votes were counted. It's still one of your most popular devices—it doesn't hurt that it's a 4G device, runs stock Android, and has models available that support virtually every carrier in the United States, locked or unlocked. That's another reason the device is so popular: It's widely available unlocked, so you can take it to the carrier you choose (mostly), and use it without getting locked into a contract. Other devices may be newer, larger and fatter, but the Galaxy Nexus is a slim, trim device that fits nicely in the hand, gets the job done, and because it's still a Nexus, it has huge dev support.
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The Galaxy Nexus is the oldest of the devices in the roundup, so availability new may be spotty depending on which carrier you choose. Still, they're widely available used. The Galaxy Nexus was the first phone to ship with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (stock) on it, and it has since been updated to 4.2 Jelly Bean virtually everywhere. You get a 5MP rear camera (and a 1.3MP front-side camera) featuring the Nexus' famous "zero shutter lag," and a 4.65" HD Contour display. The Galaxy Nexus also features 1GB of RAM, a dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, and a 1750mAh/1850mAh battery (which one depends on whether you have the HSPA+ or LTE model, respectively). No expandable storage, but the Galaxy Nexus is available in 16GB or 32GB models. It's not the newest or the fastest, but it's still a great phone.
There you have it, the top five Android phones based on your nominations. Now it's time to vote for the all-out winner.
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Like we said, there were plenty of phones to go around in the nominees, but we have to give a little honorable mention love to the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx HD, which came two or three nominations away from making the top five, surprisingly—many of you praised its sleek design and its superior battery life as reasons why it should be considered as one of the best. Don't let its long name fool you—it's a super-thin phone with a beastly battery, a gorgeous screen, and a sharp camera. It's worth your consideration among the Samsungs you'll find on the store shelves next to it.
Another honorable mention goes out to the Sony Xperia Z, Sony's gorgeous high-end smartphone running stock Android that was announced at CES this past January and launched only a month later. Not only is the Xperia Z a great looking device, it's also rugged, and features dust protection, impact resistance, and even water resistance for those of us who have dropped our phones in a running sink or a toilet before. Because it's Sony it doesn't get a lot of attention, but that's a shame—the Xperia Z is highly underrated.
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Have something to say about one of the contenders? Want to make the case for your personal favorite, even if it wasn't included in the list? Remember, the top five are based on your most popular nominations from the call for contenders thread from earlier in the week. Don't just complain about the top five, let us know what your preferred alternative is—and make your case for it—in the discussions below.
The Hive Five is based on reader nominations. As with most Hive Five posts, if your favorite was left out, it's not because we hate it—it's because it didn't get the nominations required in the call for contenders post to make the top five. We understand it's a bit of a popularity contest, but if you have a favorite, we want to hear about it. Have a suggestion for the Hive Five? Send us an email at [email protected]!
Photos by John Karakatsanis, Kārlis Dambrāns, John Karakatsanis, Conan174, and Jari |
With Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the Alliance Air Shimla-Delhi flight at the scenic Jubbar Hatti airport atop a hill, 35 km from here, on Thursday morning, Himachal Pradesh tourism is set to get a boost.
The resumption of regular flights after five years is expected to attract high-end tourists, especially foreign visitors and business travellers, to Shimla and nearby hill stations. “Yes, we are hopeful that the regular flights from Delhi to Shimla will boost Himachal’s tourism industry,” DP Bhatia, liaison officer with the Shimla-based Oberoi Group of Hotels said.
Kingfisher Airlines was the last commercial airline to have operated regular flights between Delhi and Shimla till it was grounded on September 6, 2012.
With neighbouring Jammu and Kashmir seeing an escalation of violence, tourists are likely to opt for Shimla.
Turbulent past *The Delhi-Shimla flight service was suspended on September 16, 2012, when Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines was grounded. Since then, the airport was being used for unscheduled and army flights. The army’s training command or ARTRAC is headquartered in Shimla
*The airport has a runway of 1,100 metres. In 2012, a portion of it sank due to soil erosion, reducing the length by 200 metres. The AAI spent Rs 100 crore to restore the runway at Himachal Pradesh’s first airport. The full length landing strip was thrown open in December 2015
*Though unscheduled flights between Shimla and Delhi resumed soon after December 2015, air carriers were not keen to resume commercial operations as it isn’t a financially viable route
“Starting regular flights from Shimla ahead of summer is good for the tourism industry otherwise tourists usually prefer Srinagar to Shimla,” says Harman Kukreja, the president of the Shimla Hotel and Restaurateur Association.
FLIGHT FIVE DAYS A WEEK
The Alliance Air flight will operate five days a week from Wednesday to Sunday. It will depart from Delhi at 6.10 am and arrive in Shimla at 7.25 am. The same day, it will depart from Shimla at 7.45 am and return to Delhi at 8.45 am.
Chief minister Virbhadra Singh and state Tourism Development Board vice-chairman Vijai Singh Mankotia raised the issue with Airport Authority of India (AAI) a number of times to restart the regular flight and to explore the possibility of expanding Shimla airstrip to facilitate landing of bigger aircraft.
Otherwise, this time again we are going lose business travellers to Srinagar,” Bhatia added.
Travel agent Bhanu Sood said air connectivity to Shimla will boost tourism. “Since there is no flight to Shimla, high-end tourists do not visit. To attract more foreigners, air connectivity is important,” he said.
“High-end tourists who visit shimla usually travel by taxi.” he said. It takes about seven to eight hours to travel to Shimla from Delhi by road. The fare for luxury bus from Shimla to Delhi is Rs 960 while a taxi charges Rs 4,500.
“Something is better than nothing. The government should step up efforts to start more flights not only to Delhi but other parts of the country,” he added.
Shimla is the erstwhile capital of British Raj and is famous with both domestic and foreign tourists.
First Published: Apr 27, 2017 11:23 IST |
You might not know it but New Zealand has a ban on commercial parallel importing of DVDs that were bought legally overseas. Australia doesn’t have a ban, and neither does the U.S. When the government previously reviewed the ban in 2008 their own studies showed that the argument for retaining the ban was “weak” but despite that it was maintained. Recently MBIE called for submissions [PDF] again on parallel importing and we responded [PDF].
The restriction limits our access to legitimate copies of works that our peers in the rest of the world are already discussing, dissecting, and deriving new ideas from. It leaves us behind the curve, but without an offsetting benefit to the New Zealand creative sector.
New Zealand artists can import movies for non-commercial use (e.g. from Amazon), albeit at an additional cost that a commercial importer could avoid through economies of scale. This effectively prices many films out of reach, or it puts additional costs on New Zealanders who will send their money offshore (with a corresponding loss of tax revenue to the New Zealand government, which supports New Zealand artists through entities such as the New Zealand Film Commission).
If the public cannot, for example, legally obtain current material in a timely manner, then they may become skeptical of copyright law as a whole – if there are no suitable legal options then people will be more likely to use illicit channels. Maintaining a ban on commercial parallel importing decreases the supply of legal alternatives which affects all artists, not just individuals seeking to create market segmentation by controlling distribution.
Read our full submission here [150KB, PDF]. |
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